Light's Shade
by Selene Starblade
Summary: Yes, I'm back. So, what happened to X? What will Kimiko do? The real world is as important as the sim, though... Read&Review, please. That means YOU!
1. Deep Shade Strikes

X stood still, Buster aimed. He watched his opponent warily.  
  
"Please don't make me do this."  
  
'Manic Monkey' kept his hand near the explosives' trigger.  
  
"You don't have to do anything, X. I'll do it for you. HE helped me see, don't you get it? HE showed me. Humans are a scourge on this planet. I won't have them continuing to damage it. Only reploids deserve to live…"  
  
X shook his head slowly. "But you're a human too."  
  
The man in the very strange armor grinned.  
  
"But of course! Who better to purge the earth of our mistakes than one of us? It's perfect! You can't stop me, you know."  
  
The blue Hunter frowned. "Bull. That thing you're wearing wouldn't stand up to a popgun."  
  
But X was still wary. The explosives the man had planted ran all through the office building. If he hit the trigger, this building would crash down, falling on a number of other nearby buildings- and they hadn't been cleared out yet. At the least, he had to stall long enough for those people to escape.  
  
The man at the detonator grinned like his nickname.  
  
"So you say. But let's see how you stand up to the MONKEY MASHER!!"  
  
As he shouted, he lifted his free right arm, and the oversized fist mounted on the armor launched straight for X.  
  
Who simply jumped over it.  
  
The fist continued on, bashing its way out through the wall, and then a window, continuing beyond the building's interior.  
  
Amazingly, the flimsy armor that the man wore reconstituted another outsized fist, although much slower than a Buster would do something similar.  
  
'Manic Monkey' let out an insane laugh, then launched another Monkey Masher. X jumped this one as well, and was surprised when it turned and smacked him in the back of the head, knocking him down. The fist returned to its place on the armor.  
  
"Ha! Gotcha!" Giggled the off-kilter man. "That'll teach you! Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Radio message."  
  
Silently, X got back up. Monkey Masher indeed. That hadn't even been enough to make him use any internal operations energy. The man in the maverick suit was busy tinkering at the control panel now, facing away from his supposedly downed foe.  
  
Quietly, the blue-clad reploid snuck towards the man.  
  
Suddenly, Manic Monkey found himself stuck in a rock-solid headlock.  
  
"Hey! Get offa me! Grrr…"  
  
X began dragging the man bodily away from the radio. It was surprisingly difficult- although the man's armor didn't provide any real protection, and the helmet was patently useless, it somehow boosted his body strength far beyond that of a normal human. It wasn't quite up to reploid strength, but it was about the maximum a human bodybuilder could achieve.  
  
The end result of this was that X could only move awkwardly with his flailing captive, and relatively slowly. At least, so long as he wanted to keep the human in one piece. X easily kept his cool, slowly hauling the loony back to a place where he could be safely tied up. He still would like to know who set off the Maverick Alarm, though. Anyone with any knowledge could tell that this man wasn't a reploid. He was bleeding slowly from a self-inflicted wound where he had apparently tried to plug in a computer cable for whatever reason.  
  
Then X stepped in something wet, the carpet squishing oddly underneath his heavy metal foot. Looking up, he saw a multiple-decapitation victim strung up from the ceiling, the separated limbs and head each wrapped almost entirely in some sort of a fiber. The horrified look on the face was unobscured.  
  
"What the frack?!?" Exclaimed the New Blue Bomber. "How the hell.."  
  
There was a clattering noise as a strange robot clambered along the wall, heading for the panel the detonator switch had been attached to. It looked like some sort of a mechanical spider. On it's bulbous abdomen was the Maverick symbol, brightly colored and prominent.  
  
X blanched. "Organised Mavericks? But that means Sigma… and he died in the Final Weapon!"  
  
A niggling little voice in the back of X's head reminded him that Sigma was destroyed those other three times as well, and kept coming back. Why should this time have been different?  
  
Quickly, X slung the man in the monkey suit under his right arm, firing at the spider-bot with his left Buster.  
  
It wasn't quite fast enough.  
  
The spider hit the switch just before the ball of plasma ate straight through its body.  
  
X had just enough time to state "Frack."  
  
Then…  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
X sighed in relief, staring at the still-standing spider-robot.  
  
It turned to X. It spoke in a horrid voice, the sound of insectoid chittering multiplied. "Sigma sendxxx greetings, X. Anxxxx a bzzztning. Never trust huma-ggzzk work. Shoddy as geeik-" and detonated, slagging the control panel it had been clinging to.  
  
X raised his arm to speak into his comm, then remembered Manic Monkey. He looked at the oddly limp man under his right arm.  
  
Who was dead, his neck snapped by the swiftness with which X had transferred him to that position.  
  
Shuddering, X dropped the corpse. "No… I… I didn't!"  
  
  
  
Elsewhere, in a small cave deep underground, a seldom-used set of strange blue capsules flared their readouts into action for the second time within the last few minutes.  
  
Each of the capsules was eight feet across by fourteen tall, with a solid blue top section, a solid blue bottom, and a center area closed off by a pale blue energy barrier. On the top of each capsule was a glowing red hemisphere, and metallic parts and wires jutted occasionally from the solid blue sections.  
  
Readouts fired off, and crosstransmissions were sent.  
  
Capsule 1: ERRORERRORERROR! X monitor notes 'dismay at death of human'.  
  
Capsule 2: Initial response of 'relief and minor joy' taken in error. Suggest termination of program 'LGHT/D'  
  
Capsule 3: Negative. Program cannot be terminated at this point- will terminate upon completion.  
  
Capsule 4: Double-check readout from monitor chip.  
  
Capsule 1: X monitor chip second readout confirmed. 'Dismay' present. Also registering 'disbelief', 'sorrow', 'fear', and 'disgust'.  
  
Capsule 5: Relative success rate of initial primary function of 'LGHT/D' program under trigger parameter 1 estimate at 70%.  
  
Capsule 3: Success level exceeds safety requirements for survival of necessary unit given current situation. Suggest modifying portions of program 'LGHT/D' prior to segment activation. Prevention of 'LGHT/D' program success priority, expected resulting success chance of initial primary function estimated below 10%.  
  
Capsule 2: Expected resultant success possibility acceptable. Modifying program 'LGHT/D'. Replace string: 'ACTIVATE BLITZKREIG'. Using suggested replacement string: 'ACTIVATE DEEP SHADE'.  
  
Capsule 5: String replacement successful. Activating optional subroutine 'DPLGY'.  
  
Capsule 4: Activation complete. Message delivered. Prepare to follow primary directive Y/N?  
  
Capsule 5: Negative. Trigger Alpha Omega is off. Power reserves average below 50 %. Suggest shutdown until trigger switch to conserve power, Capsule 1 to remain active. Consensus program 'Cascade Activation' suggested.  
  
Capsule 1: Confirmed.  
  
Capsule 2: Confirmed. Initiating shutdown.  
  
Capsule 3: Confirmed. Initiating shutdown.  
  
Capsule 4: Confirmed. Initiating shutdown.  
  
Capsule 5: Confirmed. Contacting Capsule Alpha, triggering message transfer to Capsule 6. Transfer complete. Initiating shutdown concurrent with program 'Cascade Activation'.  
  
  
  
The two Hunters guarding the path to the front doors of MHHQ waited uneasily.  
  
"Remember, " began the slightly taller of the two, an orange-armored turtle reploid. "Sigma's out and about. At the first sign of something fishy, grab your comm."  
  
The shorter, thinner humanoid reploid nodded. "Understood sir."  
  
Suddenly, with a grunt, he was sent flying by some invisible force.  
  
"Holy crap!" The turtle opened his com. "This is Turtlava. Uni-" He cut off as his comm sparked and melted, as if struck by a plasma weapon.  
  
Only there was no plasma there. Looking about, he heard the whine of a Buster charging, although the sound was oddly distorted and quiet. Homing on the sound, he spotted the strangest looking reploid he'd ever seen. If it was a reploid. A scant 4' 11", it was mostly covered in a deep blue cape, almost black. Poking out of a fold was a strange-looking Buster, some sort of a Buster/turbofan hybrid, it looked like. The feet were rather large for its size, but the helmet/head was wierdest of all. It had a piece where a mouth would be that looked like an old steam train's cowcatcher. The top of the helmet was strangely peaked, centered behind what looked like a soft-purple control chip cover. Two fins stuck high to the sides off the head, reminiscent of a devil's horns. A second pair of fins, more like wings, stuck straight out to the sides, making the whole head assembly look like a demented miniature space-fighter. The nearly- black visor over the cowcatcher did make an odd match for some sort of cockpit cover.  
  
The figure raised the Buster slightly, and there was an almost silent firing sound. To the Hunter's surprise, there was no visible shot from the buster. Instinctively, he turned one armored forearm to where the blast might have been, and got lucky, as he felt the invisible plasma spend itself against the heavy plating. Apparently, the Buster's power was lower than a typical model, or it would have had more effect on the plating. Turtlava raised an arm, forming his own buster, but stopped when the figure began waving its own weapon in a circular pattern.  
  
The weapon waved once in a very fast circle, and a firing sound was released somewhere. The Hunter skipped to the side, and charged towards the figure, dash jets on full. His opponent dashed straight towards him, and then to his surprise, changed directions abruptly mid-dash, going straight up, then forward over him. Faster than he could turn, the figure landed behind him. It froze, and he whirled.  
  
A shot rang out.  
  
  
  
"For the last time, X…" Grumbled a thoroughly disgruntled Reploid doctor in a sky-blue bodysuit. He was a couple of inches taller than X and bald, with hair that would have been reminiscent of Dr. Wily's had it been gray instead of brown. "IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. Anyone could have made that mistake. Considering what might have been at risk, the price was all right."  
  
"That's just it, though…" Stated X, solemnly. "It wasn't at risk. And I didn't even notice I'd killed him until after, when I went to contact the others. I should have been paying more attention to his wellbeing. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with me?"  
  
The doctor just stared at him. "When I said 'for the last time', I meant it. And no, you're not going maverick. Now will you please get out of my medical bay? I have other things to-"  
  
The alarm sounded just then, cutting the doctor off. Both reploids looked up at the alarm.  
  
"What the-"  
  
"X! X, are you there? This is Cain."  
  
X opened up the comm on his left arm. "This is X. What's going on here? Is Sigma attacking?"  
  
"No, it's worse and better than that."  
  
X blinked. "Beg pardon?"  
  
"Just get to my office. NOW."  
  
"Great." Grumbled X. "And I still haven't figured out what we're going to tell the GDC…"  
  
Gatstar, the short, bald-pated humanoid doctor reploid sighed as X booked it out of the medical bay. "I hope whatever it is distracts him enough to let him settle that. Dammit, I'm not a psychologist." He turned to go get a beer, when one of the Unit Commanders stumbled in, supporting two unconscious Hunters, one with a plasma burn on her face, the other with a shattered helmet.  
  
"What the frack!?!?"  
  
  
  
"…is going on?" Asked a thoroughly puzzled X.  
  
Cain turned his mini-viewscreen to X. "See for yourself."  
  
On the screen was one of the halls at the other end of the MHHQ. Right then, a number of Hunters armed with Busters were crouched behind handy support posts, taking potshots at a strange figure smoothly striding down the hall towards the camera. Every time a shot was about to hit, the figure would dash.  
  
What was strange was how it avoided the follow-ups. Anytime a shot was about to peg it mid-dash, it would simply change direction, sliding left or right, seemingly devoid of inertia. Eventually it reached a Hunter.  
  
With ruthless efficiency, the possibly reploid lashed out from under the cape with a massive, three-clawed battering ram of an arm, and grabbed the erstwhile Hunter by the head. Almost casually, it smacked the reploid against the wall, leaving a dent. Then it threw him over its shoulder into another wall, leaving a second dent. The Hunter slumped to the floor, out for the count. The figure resumed its steady progress.  
  
"You want me to stop it, right Cain?"  
  
"Yes, but there's more… it gets wierder. So far, it hasn't killed any hunters, reploid or human. That means it isn't a maverick we're dealing with. Strangest of all, it's left a few of the reploid hunters conscious- and each time it asked them where you were."  
  
"So, whatever it is, it's looking for me?"  
  
Cain nodded. "Right. Oh, there's Zero. Finally."  
  
And indeed, there he was, right in front of the camera. The mystery entity had made it halfway down the remaining hall by now.  
  
X hurried out of the office, to go intercept whoever-this-was. Zero would probably stop them, but he wanted to be able to get in first questions.  
  
  
  
Zero grinned almost ferally. Whatever this thing was, it was going down now. The Crimson Hunter would pound it into scrap, and that was that.  
  
As the unknown robot stepped past the last of the unconcscious Hunters, it found itself on the receiving end of a beam saber swing. Quickly, it dashed sideways, loosing a shot.  
  
Easily deflecting the invisible, but panicked shot, Zero grinned and took another swipe, this time with a crosswise follow-up, and a third, rising vertical strike. The figure sidestepped the first, jumped the second, and dashed to the other side, avoiding the third. Thrusting the heavy arm out, it tried to grab Zero by the head.  
  
The wily hunter wasn't that easy, however, and met the arm with his own fist, stopping it cold.  
  
The figure paused a moment, and that was all Zero needed. One swift saber slash later, the figure should have stood without a head.  
  
Instead, it had caught the saber on its claws, having wrenched its arm away from the Crimson Hunter's fist.  
  
Zero noted to his surprise that the claws, while not TitaniTefloAlloy, were somewhat resistant to plasma, as his saber bit, but did not cut through them.  
  
Both combatants jumped back a short distance, Zero giving the unknown a wary gaze. Suddenly, he kicked on his dash boots, charging in for a swift slash.  
  
But the figure swirled its cape, and disappeared. Zero skidded to a halt, dismayed. Then he heard something behind him, and ducked, whirling about. He looked up at the strange buster behind where his head had just been.  
  
Sticking out of the wall.  
  
"What the?"  
  
The buster instantly faded back out, and Zero was left looking around on his toes again. Where on earth had that thing gone?  
  
As he returned to his original facing, he got his answer in the form of a somehow dash-boosted kick to the rear end, which sent him skidding down the hall on his front.  
  
There was a 'beep', and the strange figure faded back into view, foot still raised. It put its foot down, and dashed after Zero.  
  
Zero kicked on his own dash boots, narrowly avoiding a wicked flying kneedrop. That thing had spiked knees! The whatever-it-was sprang back to its feet and ran after him, dashing to catch up. Zero somehow flipped to his feet, and dashing away from it, manifested a small energy pellet.  
  
This was the Rakuhouha pellet, a small container of unstable plasma which, when sufficiently disturbed, shattered and sprayed plasma spheres over an area.  
  
Turning his body, continuing his mad dash down the hall, Zero flung the pellet at his pursuer.  
  
He continued his dash, determined to be out of the blast radius when the darned thing went off.  
  
To his surprise, it burst rather close to him.  
  
As in, by impacting his back.  
  
Zero was blown clean out of the building, totally out of it for the moment.  
  
The figure straightened up, letting go of its cape, which it had used to catch the pellet and fling it back. Turning, it resumed its progress down the hallway. It had not escaped unscathed, though. There were a few scorch marks on the buster and one head-fin, and the end of the cape had been eaten ragged by a stray plasma sphere.  
  
The intruder continued towards the area currently occupied by the 17th and 00th units.  
  
  
  
X rushed into hall 20, just in time to see the strange figure clothesline the last conscious Hunter, forcing him to join his comrades-at-arms.  
  
Slowly, it turned to face him. The cape had been mostly shredded now, no longer serving to cover the figure.  
  
And a strange appearance it had, indeed.  
  
The three-clawed pistonlike arm was the right arm, and near the elbow on the forearm were two oblong crystals. The left arm, containing the odd buster, had two oblong crystals, and a couple of strange spike/fins, one simple, cutting a half-crescent, the other zigzagging like a rounded lightning bolt, ending with a point aimed back and outwards. The body of the machine was strangely bulky, entirely solid. Obviously, this intruder could not rotate at the waist. The center of the abdomen was decorated with a huge, red, shield-like hourglass shape, bracketed on both sides by yellow bands of armor like were on X's Paladin armor set. The left shoulder was covered, the cape attaching to the front of it. The right, however, had the cape apparently pinned to the top of it, revealing an odd, armadillo-like shoulder guard. Where a shirt would have lapels, the neck also had them, but they were long half-crescents, like some sort of a broad barrier. The lower leg sections had, instead of a simple upward-jutting knee guard, twin curved spikes that reached a full third of the way up the thighs of the mechanical monster.  
  
The entire thing, aside from the banding and hourglass, was rendered in shades of black and deep green. Were it not for the sheer bulkiness of the warrior, the design would have seemed optimum for infiltration, but with the impressive thickness of all the parts, it stuck out like a spoon in a knife drawer.  
  
As it raised its buster to point at X, the blue Hunter noticed that the small barrel was at an angle to the rest of the buster, making it seem like the cannon was aimed where it actually was not.  
  
Both warriors held the charge on their busters, preparing full-power shots. The indicative sound hit peak for the intruder earlier than for X, and at a lower note as well.  
  
Suddenly, the soft whine of the intruder's buster ceased, and X dodged on an instinct. He winced as he heard plasma hit a wall behind him. Either the shots were incredibly fast, making them invisible, or the special design of the buster was to keep the plasma from emitting light.  
  
The figure traced X with its buster, otherwise unmoving. This time, the charging whine lasted less time, but hit the same pitch. Both unleashed their shots simultaneously. Midway between them, X's blue shot, tinged pink, roiled as it overcame a smaller mass of plasma. The figure dodged, however, dashing under the shot.  
  
Only to catch a small shot in the side of the head. A new scorch mark adorned the side of the helmet. Continuing the dash, the figure shot forward, slamming the claw-arm out. X jumped his opponent, and the "hand" slammed into the wall, embedding itself in the metal.  
  
With a gradual creaking sound, the intruder ripped its arm free, seemingly none the worse for wear, just as X landed behind it, firing a level two shot at its leg. Even as it stumbled, a new scorch mark on the back of its left leg, it span, just enough to fire at X's arm.  
  
X caught the shot on his armband, noticing that it was definitely weaker than the level three shot. His Internal Operations Energy read at 95%. He remained wary, however- this thing had managed to at least temporarily disable Zero, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten this far. There had to be something up its thick metal sleeve.  
  
The intruder swung its piston-claw at X, in a backhanded blow. The blue Hunter ducked, and came back with a solid punch to his opponent's midsection. As the intruder fell to the floor, X noted that his hand had suffered some damage from that- nothing serious, but obviously physical combat was as likely to damage him as it was his opponent- maybe moreso.  
  
X jumped back, charging his buster as the figure clumsily began to get to its feet- a demonstration in how a waist is imperative to human motion. As soon as he reached the green blast level, he released the shot, nailing the intruder in the side of the head.  
  
The armored robot fell on its side as the upper left fin on the helmet snapped off, almost cleanly, leaving a few ragged fragments still sticking out at the top left side of the dark visor. A spray of light shots followed, smacking into the intruder at mostly random locations. It got to its feet, the smaller shot lacking enough force to move it, but one of the knee-spikes was shattered.  
  
Turning, it dashed straight for X again. X jumped once more, and was surprised when the intruder suddenly changed directions, heading straight up at him. One leg swung up in a dash-boosted kick, which clanged heavily into the armored seat of the blue Hunter. X was sent flying, while the intruder tumbled out of control. Apparently that fin had been somewhat important. Both landed on their heads, X more mortified than damaged. His opponent, however, lost the tip off the other top fin to the unforgiving ground.  
  
As he scrambled to his feet, charging his buster, X glanced at his internal operations energy reading, getting a swift reply of 85%. Quickly drawing a bead, X released a full-powered shot at the intruder. It, however, fired off its dash boots, sliding across the ground with a grating sound, spraying sparks from the friction. Sliding under the plasma, it released its own invisible shot at X, who caught it in the gut. X stumbled back, coughing slightly. His Internal Operations energy had dropped another 5 percent, and it didn't look like he'd caused any serious damage to the intruder yet.  
  
The intruder stumbled to its feet, and the two took aim again.  
  
Then, with absolutely no warning, Zero came in from behind the intruder, lashing out at its buster. Swiftly, it spun, but the blade took the smaller fin off.  
  
The piston-claw swung in a wide arc, and Zero caught it on his shin, pulling on the arm from either side of the impact point with his elbows. There was a wicked 'greeenchKRAK' sound, as the forearm bent at a 45 degree angle, the metal splitting opposite Zero's leg. Something inside had obviously been broken as well. The figure stumbled, and lashed out in a mule-kick, catching Zero in the gut as he came back down from his short hop.  
  
The Crimson Hunter impacted a wall, hard, and was forced to rest there a moment, to recover from the two impacts.  
  
That thing had kick.  
  
The intruder spun to face X just in time to catch a plasma supershot full in the face. Flung backwards, it smacked into the wall to one side and somewhat above Zero, and fell off, landing on its feet. The lower left fin was now missing a good half its length, and the longer spike on the buster had cracked at the last bend.  
  
As it wobbled forward, X hit it with another flurry of small plasma shot, in the same places as he had earlier. This time, armor began to crack and melt under the plasma fury. The buster raised to fire another shot at X, and received a flurry of plasma all its own. Several of the internal fins broke, and the armor on the buster cracked and burned as well, a hole eaten in one spot.  
  
The upshot of this was, that when the intruder released its shot at X, this time he could see it. The ball of plasma was faintly green, and very close to totally translucent, but X could see it well enough to jump it, continuing his barrage. Lashing out with a kick, X finished the forward jump, cracking the visor on the odd helmet, now bereft of all but one fin. Landing neatly, X was surprised when the piston claw swung up again, despite being broken, the talons aimed at his face.  
  
He was saved from some rather nasty synthflesh wounds by Zero, who interposed his saber from the side. This time, two of the talons broke off raggedly, and the third sustained a crack in the base. The intruder moved its arm the other way, intending to elbow the Crimson Hunter in the jaw.  
  
Zero was prepared, however, and caught the blow in his left hand, swinging his own knee up into the chest of the intruder, leaving a serious dent. His right arm lashed out in a vertical slice with the saber, which the figure stumbled back out of the way of, but not quite in time. Zero's saber bit through the 'toe' of the figure's right boot, removing that portion of the appendage entirely.  
  
Now seriously unbalanced the figure stumbled back, only to be bowled over by another level three shot from X. The blue hunter began charging as the intruder slowly got to one knee, and dash-jumped over it, avoiding the faint green shot unleashed in his direction. As he moved overhead, the figure spun as well.  
  
X leveled his buster at the intruder, aiming for its main body- better to be sure of taking it out at least temporarily.  
  
The figure noticed, and crouched slightly, preparing to jump up over the supershot-  
  
Which sizzled in too fast, and the figure caught the searing plasma in the right side of its head. There was an explosion, and the armored figure was sent flying back into a wall, crumpling the metal plating badly, before falling to the ground. The buster's last fin caught on the wall, snapping off as the figure fell, the still-whole left foot landing flat on the floor. The other leg stretched out in front of it, sparking where the toes were missing. The shoulder armor and the entire right half of the helmet had been pretty much vaporized. The visor and cowcatcher had shattered, and the face of the enemy was finally open to scrutiny.  
  
X and Zero did a double-take.  
  
The reason why the armor had been so bulky was apparent- the reploid wearing it was also wearing a normal suit of armor under it. Her eyes were blank, and she was obviously unconscious. This was probably something of a mercy- slightly off-color purple reploid blood flowed slowly from her mouth, and her right eye was almost totally swollen shut, surrounded by plasma burns, which also tracked along her inner helmet, to the now- destroyed side-vent 'ear'. The right shoulder-pad was badly cracked as well. As a matter of fact, all of her armor, inner and outer, now bore a resemblence to a jigsaw puzzle, cracks everywhere. The turbofan/buster had slid free of the left upper arm, exposing a small part of her arm from underneath the armor. Even her light purple control-chip cover was badly cracked, but luckily for her, still intact. The cape, however, had given up the ghost, and only a small shred still clung to the 'pin' on the front of her armor's left shoulder.  
  
The two top Hunters gave each other the exact same look at the exact same time, and said the exact same thing.  
  
"What do we do with her?"  
  
  
  
WAHAHAHAHA! You may never know!  
  
Unless I write the next chapter of this.  
  
In which case, you'll know then. Anywho… this fic is an AU of sorts. It seriously diverges from the standard MMX timeline a little while after X4, although the point of actual divergence is way, way back there.  
  
Before I end this chapter, however, I have to say…  
  
ARIGATOO, ERICO-SAN!!!!  
  
I am using the technology/timeline/world- view presented by Erico in his fics, with some add-ons I discussed with him. Thanks Erico, for prereading, and also for taking the time to discuss my ideas with me. Thanks to the Bard of Science (whose name escapes me for the moment), for coming up with so many wonderful ideas.  
  
REVIEW THIS!!!! IF YOU ALREADY DID AND SOMETHING CHANGED REVIEW IT AGAIN!!  
  
Oh, and btw… if you like Ranma ½ also, please to check out my other two fics, Passenger and Out Of My Hair. They are also on FF.Net.  
  
Till next time, Jaa ne!  
  
"Commit random kindness and senseless acts of beauty"  
  
-A really cool bumper sticker. 


	2. What's in a Name?

Things were vaguely fuzzy.  
  
This didn't bother her as much as it should have, probably because she couldn't really remember things NOT being fuzzy.  
  
In any case, things were vaguely fuzzy. She was seeing… she was seeing a memory.  
  
She was at the zoo. She was at the zoo with her otoosan. Her father.  
  
She never had understood what the other kids thought was wrong with her father. Most adults just assumed he was some sort of guardian. In a way, it was entirely understandable.  
  
After all, most children's father's aren't around eight feet tall, and barrel-chested with very big hands. Of course, most children's fathers don't regularly open up their children's skulls and mess around in there with electrical instruments, but she had been led to understand that this wasn't really to be talked about at the time.  
  
She was… seven at the time? Yes, that's what her otoosan had told her she was. The significance of the number still escaped her. The words 'years old' were often associated with that number in her memory. Once someone had asked her when she would be eight.  
  
In retrospect, 'When 'toosan says I am.' May not have been the best answer. That had been her last day at that school.  
  
Not that she could remember much else from that school anyways. Or anywhere for that matter. All she could remember now was what she had thought since realizing that this was a memory she was seeing.  
  
She remembered running for some reason, then tripping…. A cut, some vaguely purplish blood on her knee… Her father scooping her up in his huge hand, comforting her….and then…  
  
The memory left.  
  
Oh well, there were bound to be others.  
  
  
  
She became aware of a sensation of being very alone. Groggily, she opened her eyes.  
  
Ouch. Too bright.  
  
She blinked rapidly, eyes adjusting to light for the first time again.  
  
Something felt….off, somehow. Sitting up, she looked around, and saw that she was in a basically empty room. There was the wierd contraption she was lying in, which seemed a little bit familiar, a few wooden chairs, and a really big mirror. But… none of that was the source of the strangeness. She looked down at herself.  
  
Oh. That was what was strange. She was a lot bigger than she remembered. Her feet and hands seemed awfully far away, compared to normal.  
  
She shook her head. Normal? What was she using as a reference point?  
  
Worry about that later. Examining herself, she found that she was wearing a long, pleated skirt and a surprisingly comfortable blouse. Her shoes, however…  
  
She wasn't wearing shoes. Instead, she had on some sort of really big metallic boot. What on earth were those for?  
  
Dash Boots at 0% functionality. All dash jet controls have been blocked. Suggest obtaining repairs.  
  
She blinked. Surprised, she spoke out loud.  
  
"Da-shu Butsu?"  
  
Error. Dash jet controls inaccessible at this time.  
  
This was weird.  
  
Warning. Unknown warp signal approaching. Suggest preparing for self- defense. Do you wish to equip your Buster Y/N?  
  
"Nan da?"  
  
A strange blue beam came down from the ceiling in plain view. As she watched it, she was surprised to see it stop just above the floor, then coalesce into a person in blue armor and a blue bodysuit. Something about his armor seemed vaguely familiar.  
  
The two occupants of the room stared at each other for a few seconds.  
  
Finally, the person in the blue armor spoke.  
  
"Good morning." He said, remaining at his distance from her.  
  
She looked at him, puzzled. What had he just said? It sounded slightly familiar…  
  
The person in blue waited for a few seconds, then looked slightly disappointed. He decided to try again. Pointing to himself, he spoke again.  
  
"X" he said.  
  
She nodded slowly, and pointed at him. "Ek'su."  
  
'X' then pointed at her and cocked an eyebrow up.  
  
It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. She pointed at herself.  
  
"Kimiko." She stated.  
  
X tilted his head a moment, then looked at her again. "Kimiko-san, anata wa Eigo ga hanashimas'ka?"  
  
Kimiko smiled slightly. Now she could understand him. "Ee, s'koshi Eigo ga hanashimas'. Ano… koko wa doko da?"  
  
X frowned slightly. "Sumimasen… Eigo ga hanashimasu, onegai…"  
  
Kimiko nodded, a troubled expression crossing her face. Quickly enough, she figured it out.  
  
"Wheru am' I?" She asked, with a thick Japanese accent.  
  
"I'm sorry." Replied X. "I can't tell you right now. I may be able to later."  
  
She frowned. "Why… Why not'?"  
  
X sighed. "Would you believe, we're still trying to figure that out?"  
  
Kimiko gave him a blank look. "I… not' un'derstandu."  
  
X frowned slightly. "I don't know." He tilted his head slightly. "Stay there… I'll be right back."  
  
X dissipated back into a blue beam, which exited via the ceiling.  
  
Kimiko watched, wondering if she could do that.  
  
Error. Warp systems have been locked out. Unable to access. Suggest system scan to determine source of error.  
  
System scan?  
  
System scan. Will determine presence of virus/damage to files of system.  
  
Are virus and damage good or bad things?  
  
Negative. Virus and file damage qualify as 'harm'.  
  
Begin system scan.  
  
Affirmative. Scan will take approximately two minutes. Please do not engage in strenuous activity until scan is complete.  
  
  
  
Zero and Dr. Cain turned to X as he warped in inside the room on the other side of the 'mirror'.  
  
"English dictionary/encyclopedia chip, right X?" Suggested Dr. Cain.  
  
X nodded. "It's a little odd to have to get one, though. At least we know she's probably from Japan, possibly a household-only reploid originally, considering that she doesn't have English skills."  
  
Cain shrugged. "Whatever it takes to figure this out- within reason, that is."  
  
The reploid sitting at the mike controls, a wallaby-type, was sent to retrieve the chip from the archives.  
  
"I still don't think that was the safest thing to do, X."  
  
X looked at Zero. "Look, if we're going to get her to talk to us, we need her to trust us to some degree. She's more likely to trust us if someone comes in to talk to her in person. I know, I know. We could have sent in one of the big guys with the big guns, but if you found yourself in a mostly empty room with one of those, how would you react?"  
  
Zero sighed. "I suppose you're right. I still don't like this, though. We don't even have a clue where she came from."  
  
Arnie stepped back into the small room, and handed X the chip. "'Ere y'go, X."  
  
X nodded his thanks, and the 'wallaboid' took his seat at the controls of the closed-circuit mikes.  
  
In a flare of blue, X warped out again.  
  
  
  
Kimiko looked up at X as he finished warping in again.  
  
"Ecksu," She began, "Why do I know' my name'?"  
  
X blinked. "Hold on a second… Here, do you know what to do with this?" He held up the chip.  
  
Kimiko looked at the chip.  
  
Do I know what that is?  
  
Affirmative. Item is memory-storage chip of unknown type. Unknown parameters and volume. Subject can be linked to through subcutaneous input jack.  
  
Where is 'subcutaneous input jack'?  
  
Subcutaneous input jack located in right hand, ventral side, behind third knuckle.  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Is… How' to say'… memori chippu."  
  
X nodded. "This will tell you how to speak good English." He took a step forward, offering it to her.  
  
Kimiko eyed him warily for a moment. A memory surfaced, only a fraction of it.  
  
'Never accept candy, memory, or other objects from normal strangers. But if the stranger looks like this…'  
  
There was a flash of a picture. In it were a small group of people. The one in the middle…  
  
She compared the image in her memory to the person standing in front of her.  
  
They were… similar. Not the same, but enough alike…..  
  
Cautiously, she walked slowly over to X, and took the chip from him. Eyes on him the whole time, she brought the chip to the back of her right hand. An undetectably thin break in her synthskin parted, permitting the memory chip to be plugged into the back of her hand.  
  
Scanning external memory source. Parameters defined. Informational content defined. Directions defined. Do you wish to install memory labeled "English Language" Y/N  
  
Yes.  
  
Confirmed. Please be seated. Program will terminate within 5-10 minutes with current memory available. Do you wish to pause programming scan to speed up process Y/N  
  
….Yes.  
  
Confirmed.  
  
Kimiko walked over to the contraption she had woken up on, and sat down.  
  
Her eyes went blank as the installation began. She only hoped she had made the right choice, trusting this… abnormal stranger.  
  
X stood, watched, and waited.  
  
  
  
And that's chapter two. This one will go somewhat slowly- I'm writing two other fics at higher speed, and I only get the mood to write this every once in a while.  
  
I'm not sure about the whole memory chip/subcutaneous jack thing, but it kind of makes sense to me. After all, how would reploids hook up to the education systems for a faster learning process? Mind, certain things, like personal experiences, probably couldn't really be transferred or downloaded this way, but…  
  
Erico, tell me what you think of this one.  
  
Heck, everyone tell me what you think. Really. Two reviews? Why doesn't anyone read this? My other fics got four reviews on the first chapter alone. Each.  
  
Ah, well. I'll just be left wondering.  
  
If you want to Email me, check my author profile. My real Email address is in there.  
  
Anyhoo…  
  
The mystery of where Kimiko is from isn't resolved yet.  
  
Nor why her memories are hazy.  
  
And I haven't even introduced the evil plot yet, either.  
  
Loooooong way to go.  
  
Till next time, Ja ne!  
  
"It's not whether or not you win.  
  
It's not how you play the game.  
  
It's whether or not everyone has fun."  
  
-Me 


	3. Shock From the Past

Kimiko's eyes finally cleared. Reaching down with her left hand, she unplugged the chip from the back of her right hand. The synthskin closed up again, once more appearing seamless.  
  
X looked at her. "Do you understand me better now?"  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Hai. Thank you, Ecksu-san." She spoke much better English now, with only a slight Japanese accent.  
  
Visually measuring the distance between herself and X, she tossed him the chip.  
  
He caught it easily, in one hand. "So, as-"  
  
She cut him off. "My question. Why am I here?"  
  
X put one hand on his helmet and rubbed absently, as though trying to scratch his head. "Actually, we don't know…."  
  
Blink. Blink. "Beg pardon?"  
  
X shrugged. "You showed up in this weird armor, and started attacking people. Did a pretty clean job of it. You seemed to be looking for me."  
  
Kimiko shook her head. "I don't remember this at all."  
  
Error. Memory sectors 2F through 65T have been purged. Data is unrecoverable, highly scrambled.  
  
Are there any other problems?  
  
Affirmative. Blocking program has been installed with regards to Dash Boots, Armor Warp, and Translocational Warp systems. Buster functions reduced to 10 %. Do you wish to attempt to rectify one or more of these systems, Y/N?  
  
Delay decision.  
  
Confirmed.  
  
"Ecksu-san, have you installed blocks on my systems?"  
  
X blinked. "Ah… yes. For safety reasons. We weren't sure if you would try anything. Still aren't sure, really. I'm afraid I'll have to leave them there for now."  
  
Kimiko thought for a moment.  
  
Attempt to correct error in Dash Boots and Translocational Warp systems.  
  
Confirmed. Program will take indefinite period of time. Is unknown run time acceptable?  
  
Yes.  
  
Kimiko shrugged. "I guess that makes sense. I really don't remember attacking anyone, though. As a matter of fact, I don't remember much of anything besides my name and how to speak. Apparently, someone or something purged some of my memory."  
  
X nodded. "Sorry to hear that. We'd like to find out who sent you, really."  
  
Kimiko blinked, finally noticing something. "Who is 'we'?"  
  
Zero, in the observing room, decided to play a game of 'bash my head against a wall repeatedly'.  
  
Arnie turned his head to watch Zero. What was he saying? Sounded like 'ijjit' or something?  
  
  
  
X started. "Wha? Oh, uh… dang. Okay, 'we' are the Maverick Hunters."  
  
Kimiko blinked. "So, you believe I am a Maverick?"  
  
"Ah, no actually, we don't. When you attacked, you didn't kill anyone. You just seemed to be looking for me…"  
  
Surprised slightly by the immediate, almost apologetic way he answered, Kimiko didn't respond.  
  
"My turn for a question?" Asked X.  
  
Kimiko nodded.  
  
X held up a small disc. "What is this?"  
  
Kimiko walked towards him. "Ano… I don't know…"  
  
The disc was small, maybe an inch and a half across, at most. The outer edge was corrugated, like on some coins, but the center area was smooth, with an image of a slightly slanted L on it. Added in such a way as to seem to be behind the 'L' was a curved line that, if you ignored the bottom line of the 'L', would form a 'D' with the back of it.  
  
"…may I see it?"  
  
"Sure." Said X, holding it out.  
  
Kimiko reached for the disc.  
  
  
  
Arnie, Zero, and Dr. Cain all jumped. Arnie immediately started working some controls, and one of the upper corners of the room sprouted some sort of a weapon.  
  
"What the-"  
  
"-heck was THAT?" X finished.  
  
Kimiko looked at the now-glowing disc sitting on the floor. When she had touched it, it had emanated an electrical jolt into both her arm and X's. Both of them had flinched away their arms, letting it drop to the floor.  
  
"I don't know…"  
  
Suddenly, the disc emanated a hologram. Or rather, tried to. The picture quality was so bad, the image so 'snowy', that all that could be discerned was that this was probably someone's head. The sound quality was bad, too, but Kimiko recognized the voice that spoke.  
  
"If this message has been activated, then one of three things has happened."  
  
"Otoosan?" Whispered a slightly puzzled Kimiko.  
  
"One, Megaman X has been destroyed. Two, Kimiko has been destroyed. Three, both of them have touched this disc simultaneously." There was a bit of a blip in the recording, then it continued. "Megaman X, Kimiko, you have my apologies. If both of you are listening to this, then the program that activates Kimiko has misfired."  
  
X glanced at Kimiko, but remained silent, his eyes returning to the poor- quality holograph.  
  
"Any way that this program has been activated, there are a few things I must communicate. First of all, Megaman X, Dr. Light, due to an incident with Dr. Wily, was unsure of your proper functioning. This is why you were sealed inside a capsule. More than this I cannot reveal at this time. I, however, had confidence in Dr. Light's abilities, and indeed, knew that X might need help in the future. To that end, I created Kimiko. Kimiko, this program was created mainly in the possibility that X would turn rogue. You are built off of a copy of X's program, and hence can be considered one of the prototypes for a new type of robot with the capability of completely independent thought and, hopefully, of emotion. I did what I could with a 'younger' robot body to ensure that you would have a good base personality. I then transferred you to the body you now wear. If X did turn rogue, then the program would activate you, armed specifically enough to defeat, perhaps destroy him in combat. Programs such as the one I used are not, however, infallible. Should both you and X be listening to this, then please work together for the greater good. I know X is likely destined for high things, and can only believe that you might, as well. If X has not gone rogue, then I urge him to seek out his past. A further message from me can be found there. More I cannot say, for there is no room left on this recording."  
  
Abruptly, the message cut off, and the small disc melted into a tiny pile of slag.  
  
X and Kimiko just stood there for a while, staring at the blackened lump.  
  
  
  
Zero and Cain stood thoughtfully as Arnie disarmed the electrical stunner.  
  
"You know," began Zero. "This could be a really elaborate Maverick trap…"  
  
Cain blinked at Zero, then shook his head. "Only you, Zero. Only you could see all this and still find a reason to doubt."  
  
Zero nodded. "Only I have as much combat experience and combat planning ability as I do."  
  
Cain sighed. "I suppose you could be right. But I doubt it. I'll wait to hear what X has to say about this first, before deciding what to do with our uninvited and, apparently, unintentional guest."  
  
Zero shrugged in response to this. "Hey, you're the boss."  
  
  
  
Elsewhere.  
  
Somewhere in the Pacific, in the Ring of Fire, in a long-dormant volcano, there was pseudo-life.  
  
Robots and a few reploids, moving about and building a base. Slowly, a shape was being carved out of the face of the mountain-island, and the form was yet indistinct.  
  
Somewhere inside, a few reploids were conversing.  
  
"So, I get the jungle area, right, String?"  
  
'String' nodded. He was a desert-brown-armored reploid, with a distinctly insectoid helmet. Both his hands were replaced by pincers with an attatched thumb. From his back sprouted a tall tail, which suspended a large bulb with an attatched sharp point a foot over his head. Otherwise, he was an unassuming five and a half feet tall.  
  
"Right." He said to the one screen, in a voice that seemed to be composed of the chittering of many insects. Turning to the other reploid in the room, String spoke again. "Gale, how is the airship coming?"  
  
Gale Falcon's eyes focused on the scorpion reploid. Gale was an unusual Maverick. Where most other Mavericks of any great skill were male in form, she was emphatically female. Whoever had designed her had done an amazing job on the armor, as well. She looked for all the world like a classic angel, wearing light plate armor, all in a bone-white, with the odd addition of her head and wings being those of a falcon, and a spread- feathered tail. Unlike the other Falcon model reploids, she had two hands, rather than a permanent turbofan replacing one forearm.  
  
"It is on schedule, String. Two weeks more."  
  
String Scorpion nodded. "Good. We'll do Sigma proud, and provide him with a good place to build a new body, as well. Look out Maverick Hunters. Here come the Island Irregulars."  
  
A dry, chittering chuckle emanated from his throat, and Gale shook her head slowly. Such a melodramatist.  
  
  
  
X and Kimiko looked at each other over the scorched lump that had been a very important message.  
  
X extended a hand. Kimiko looked down at it then up to X's face.  
  
The blue-armored reploid smiled slightly. "Well," he began, "Let me be the first to say, welcome to the twenty-second century. Hopefully, I can soon say 'Welcome to the Maverick Hunters' as well, but that's not entirely up to me."  
  
Taking X's hand, Kimiko pumped it up and down once. "It is good to be here, Ecksu-san."  
  
She smiled slightly. A friend already. Her father really had sent her somewhere.  
  
Into the future.  
  
And it didn't look like things were going to be too bad.  
  
  
  
Okey-dokey, that's chapter three.  
  
STILL ONLY FOUR REVIEWS??  
  
Is noone reading this or something?  
  
Recommend this to people, or something, PLEASE???  
  
Okay, so, it's been established that Kimiko is not there to kill everyone. Well, established to everyone who really knows about her except Zero, of course.  
  
And we know that something about X's past holds more clues to Kimiko as well.  
  
Oh, and then there are the Mavvies. You know, the ones in the volcano. So what's the evil plot?  
  
That…  
  
Is a secret.  
  
::several Lina Inverses from alternate dimensions chase the author::  
  
::running away:: Ja ne!….  
  
Keep your friends close.  
  
Keep your enemies closer.  
  
And keep the enemies of your enemies very, very confused.  
  
Because being in control is a GOOD thing.  
  
-Me. 


	4. Where Do We Go From Here?

X, Zero, and Dr. Cain all sat around a table in one of the smaller breifing rooms.  
  
"I think we should give her a chance." Stated X. "The message, and the way she acted, leads me to believe that she is no danger to us. Not once did she even suspect I was trying to trick her- like a Reploid first activated. Tabula rasa."  
  
Zero shook his head. "But someone removed some of her memory- possibly most of it. Maybe there's a hidden program lurking in there, waiting to restore it- and that memory could contain a killer program."  
  
"I doubt it." Replied X. "After all, she seemed to recognise the voice as that of her father."  
  
"That could just be part of the plan."  
  
"I doubt it. It certainly doesn't fit any of the methods the Mavericks have used in the past. Even when Sigma hid behind the Repliforce, there wasn't anything hardly so subtle."  
  
"Exactly, X." Zero slapped the table lightly. "THAT's why we should be on the lookout for something like this. They would know we weren't going to suspect it, because they've never done this before."  
  
Cain, looking skeptical, finally spoke up. "Yes, but all evidence points to Mavericks as being more of the 'shoot first, ask questions later' type. Besides, it's way too much difficulty to go to in order to just attack us with a single reploid. Even if she was highly skilled. From their point of view, it would probably be a waste of limited resources. Additionally, she isn't even on file. That means they would have had to build her themselves. The Mavericks have never relied on building and training new reploids- they always abduct existing ones."  
  
"I guess you have a point, but I still think we should be careful."  
  
X shook his head. "I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful. I'm just saying we shouldn't be that suspicious. Maybe keep her with one of our better Hunters at all times, just in case, until she's proven herself. That suit both of you?"  
  
Zero nodded. "It's not what I would like, but I guess it'll do."  
  
"I like that idea as well." Piped in Cain. "We'll go with that. Incidentally, given the message, I'm inclined to put her in your unit as soon as possible, X."  
  
Zero shook his head. "No can do. The 17th is something of an elite unit. She'd have to prove to be very good in basic training in order to get in there."  
  
X nodded. "I have to agree with Zero on this one. Maybe we should just train her until she is good enough, then put her in?"  
  
Cain harrumphed. "That could take a while. What if the two of you trained her yourselves? You know you're the best we've got, and the most experienced at teaching rookies."  
  
Zero smirked. "I like that." Thoughts of his saber training courses ran through his head. She'd get the hardest class he could give her. Then again, every class was the hardest, when Zero was teaching. He somewhat enjoyed the nickname- 'Instructor From Jedi Hell' a few of the trainees had called him.  
  
X smiled much less evilly than Zero was. "I agree. Sounds good to me."  
  
Cain smiled as well. "So, we're agreed. On to your last mission, X…"  
  
  
  
Kimiko was looking at herself in the mirror. Once X had gone off to 'consult with the others', she had decided she might as well familiarise herself with her new body. It certainly was different.  
  
She was a bit short compared to an adult human. Five feet zero inches, her internal voice supplied. This left her noticeably shorter than X. Her long, brown hair hung behind her in a braid, loose at the top, but the braiding itself was secure, tied off just below her waist, the last bit of hair reaching her hip height. Her eyes, strangely enough, were a deep maroon color. She had a broad face, matched by a short, but also broad nose. Her general facial shape suggested that, were she human, she would have been of Pilipino descent. Memory served to tell her that her new body shape was definitely that of an adult female, but not overemphasized. Her Dash Boots were in a simple grass green color, what she could see of them, anyways.  
  
She reached up and brushed at a stray lock of hair that hung down over the bridge of her nose, and turned to reexamine her surroundings. The room had the strange thing she'd woken up on, a couple of stools, padded, and a small, square, folding table.  
  
She walked over to the strange object. It resembled a bed, padded surface and a pillow, but the outside looked more like some sort of a capsule. It was attached to the wall behind the head of it, too, and tilted at a roughly forty-degree angle.  
  
She turned about and sat on it, carefully smoothing her skirt so it didn't expose the backs of her legs. It was an old habit, she realized, but she still had no clue where it came from.  
  
She sat there for a full six minutes, getting progressively more bored, and idly inspecting her fingernails. Finally, Kimiko looked around, and exclaimed,  
  
"What am I supposed to do here anyway? This is so boring!"  
  
Silence answered her, and she sighed. Giving in to the dullness, she stretched out in the bedlike-thing, and went to stasis.  
  
  
  
Kimiko.  
  
Yes, Otoosan?  
  
Come here for a moment.  
  
What is it, Otoosan?  
  
I want to show you something. Here, look at this picture.  
  
Hey, look, 'Toosan! There you are!  
  
(amused) Yes, I am. But look at the other people in this picture.  
  
Who are they?  
  
They were my friends.  
  
Were?  
  
Yes… they're dead now. (sadly) The last one died a couple of years ago.  
  
Oh….. Does that make you sad, Otoosan?  
  
Hai, Kimiko-chan, it makes me very sad. They were very special people.  
  
But… these aren't all people.  
  
Not exactly, no. But they were all special all the same.  
  
That doggy looks funny.  
  
(Amused) I suppose he does, Kimiko-chan, I suppose he does.  
  
  
  
X warped in. Looking around, he saw Kimiko in the stasis capsule, apparently taking a bit of a 'nap'. He walked over and looked down at her, smiling slightly. He reflected that that was probably what he would have done in this room with nothing to do, too. Carefully, he reached out and shook her by the shoulder.  
  
Kimiko half-awoke, and muttered something in indistinct Japanese about a dog.  
  
X blinked. "Beg pardon?"  
  
Kimiko sat up. "Ano… sorry. Just a… dream, I think. Yes, a dream."  
  
X nodded. "Okay then. Well, I don't get to welcome you to the Maverick Hunters… yet."  
  
Kimiko quirked up one eyebrow.  
  
"You need training first." X continued. "That is, if you want to join."  
  
"Well, Ecksu-san, Otoosan said in the message to help you, and if you are a Maverick Hunter, then I'd probably have to be one to help you, right?"  
  
X nodded. "Okay, then. Here's a chip that ought to remove those blocks we installed. That'll let you shift to your armor, and use your Dash Boots, Buster, and Warp systems."  
  
He held out a chip with his left hand, similar to the memory chip he had given her before.  
  
Kimiko raised her right hand, the synthskin parting again, and took the chip with the other hand, slotting it into the socket.  
  
1 Run external memory chip program 'Block Dissolver' Y/N  
  
Yes.  
  
Run time two minutes. Please wait.  
  
"So…" Began Kimiko. "Tell me about the Maverick Hunters, Ecksu-san."  
  
X nodded. "Sure. I guess, to explain, I'll have to go way back to the beginning. It all started with a writer by the name of Isaac Asimov. He wrote science fiction in the 20th century. To keep all his robots in line, he created a set of ingrained morals that were supposedly active in all the robots. There were three of them. The first law was that a robot must never harm a human, nor allow a human to come to harm through inaction. The second law was that a robot must never disobey a direct order from a human. The final law was that a robot must not allow itself to come to harm nor inflict harm upon itself, unless doing so would cause a human to come to harm, or require that the robot ignore a very strong order. These were called the Laws of Robotics."  
  
Kimiko nodded.  
  
"Eventually," X continued, "A man named Thomas Light, the man who built me, by the way, built a robot called Protoman. Protoman was more advanced than other robots. Where most robots had a specific set of clauses, like 'when X, then Y' that gave them strict actions to follow, Protoman was able to make decisions on his own about things. He was allowed to develop his own set of responses to things. There was a laboratory accident later, and he disappeared, but that's beside the point. The point is that Protoman was the next step up from the earlier robots. He still had all three Laws of Robotics, though."  
  
Program concluded. Please remove memory chip.  
  
Kimiko, still listening to X, removed the chip from the back of her hand, the synthskin once again presenting an unbroken surface to the world.  
  
X spoke on, noting that the block removal program was done. "Much later on, Dr. Thomas Light was able to construct me. I am the prototype for the reploids who are out and about in the world today. The difference between us and higher robots like Protoman is that we are like humans in every way. We start out with no ingrained responses, but the three Laws are still there. However, since we are able to think for ourselves, at some point in our lives we become able to modify the last two Laws of Robotics, and are able to break or bend them based on a judgement call. A Maverick is a robot who has broken the First Law, particularly through intentionally causing physical harm to a human. Long story short, the Maverick Hunters is a group created to, well, hunt and destroy Maverick reploids."  
  
Kimiko nodded slowly. "So… It's kind of like parents, the Three Laws."  
  
X looked puzzled. "Beg pardon?"  
  
Kimiko held up one hand, palm up. "When a child first starts out, they follow rules because their parents tell them to. Eventually, they outgrow those rules, particularly when they learn the reasons behind them. At this point, they no longer need those rules, because they are capable of using good judgement instead. So a Maverick is a reploid who has outgrown the First Law, and made a conscious decision counter to their good judgement, or due to a personal lack of it, particularly given that there is an organization that will then hunt down and destroy them."  
  
  
  
Dr. Cain, standing in the observation room with Zero and Arnie, blinked. "Hey, that makes a lot of sense!"  
  
Zero nodded. "She's sharp."  
  
  
  
X looked at Kimiko thoughtfully for a moment. "You know," He replied, "I hadn't thought of it like that. Actually, that makes me feel a good deal better. Thank you."  
  
Kimiko shrugged. "Everyone thinks about things differently. Anyways, now that the blocks are removed, how do we get out of here?"  
  
"Oh." X answered. "Can you access your Warp system?"  
  
Kimiko nodded.  
  
"Good. See that mirror? Try warping to a point roughly five feet past it."  
  
Kimiko nodded again, then dissolved into a beam of green and purple light, which shot up through the ceiling. X stood thinking a moment more, then followed her in a blaze of dual blue.  
  
  
  
Wa ha! Chapter four already!  
  
I'm speeding up on this one. Dunno. Just kinda got the urge to write more of this.  
  
So, Kimiko finally leaves 'The Room'. Wonder what the MHHQ denizens will think of this?  
  
And, what sort of combat ability will she display? Will she show any at all?  
  
Will I ever stop asking questions in the notes at the ends of my fanfics?  
  
Probably not, but you could always hope.  
  
Till next time, Ja ne!  
  
"I don't take it as an insult because that is a bad thing to be that you called me. I take it as an insult that you intended to insult me and you are also saying that what you called me is a bad thing."  
  
-Me. 


	5. As I was Strolling Through MHHQ One Day....

X warped into the viewing room in a flash of dichromatic blue. Kimiko was already there, intently examining Arnie, who looked rather uncomfortable. Zero and Dr. Cain were amusedly watching her investigate the gray reploid.  
  
"C'mon, Sheila, stop with th' hairy eyeball olready." Complained Arnie, fidgeting.  
  
Kimiko blinked. "My name is Kimiko, not Sheila."  
  
X chuckled. "You'll have to excuse Arnie there, he's got a few Australian language habits. 'Sheila' is the Australian word for 'lady'."  
  
Kimiko nodded, still looking at Arnie. "I see." She turned to ask X what, exactly, Arnie was, when she caught sight of Zero. She froze, then slowly edged away from him.  
  
Zero, Cain, Arnie, and X performed a unified blink.  
  
Sidling up behind X, Kimiko peeked out at Zero from behind the New Blue Bomber.  
  
"Ecksu-san…" She whispered, keeping her eyes on Zero at all times as she peeked over X's shoulder, half-crouched. "Who is that?"  
  
X turned his head so he could see her out of the corner of his eye. "That's Zero. He's the other Commander of the Maverick Hunters. Why are you acting like that?"  
  
Kimiko shook her head. "I don't know… something just tells me I should be wary of him…"  
  
X shot Zero a look, and the Crimson Hunter shrugged in return. Zero turned to Kimiko.  
  
"Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you. Well, not unless you get me real, real mad, or maybe start attacking me, but that's not likely to happen, is it?" The tone was almost, but not entirely joking.  
  
Kimiko seemed to relax some at hearing Zero speak, straightening up a bit. She stayed behind X, though.  
  
Cain chuckled. "Too bad, Zero, she's going to be wary of you in the classes now. You're not going to catch her off-guard like the normal new recruits."  
  
Zero shook his head. "For crying out loud, here…" He shot a 'why me?' look up at the ceiling.  
  
Kimiko winced, and stepped out from behind X. She stood, feet together, and placed her hands on the fronts of her thighs, bowing low to Zero.  
  
"Gomen kudasai, Zero-san…. I'm sorry." She did not come up from the bow, back parallel to the floor.  
  
Zero looked at the top of her head for a moment, then sighed. "It's alright, Kimiko." As she stood from the bow, Zero turned to Cain and X. "I've got a class to start teaching in a few minutes. If you'll excuse me…"  
  
Zero turned and left the room, shaking his head as he walked.  
  
Cain looked surprised for a moment, then recovered. "Ah, where were we?"  
  
X looked over at him. "Well, we weren't anywhere, but I might as well introduce Kimiko to you."  
  
Kimiko, still looking at the door, turned to X and Dr. Cain.  
  
X gestured to Cain. "Kimiko, meet Dr. Cain. The man who discovered me, created reploids, and the current general of the Maverick Hunters, though he doesn't ever use the title."  
  
Kimiko bowed to Cain, much as she had to Zero, though she didn't stay down this time.  
  
"It is an honor to met you, Cain-sama. Are you feeling well?"  
  
Cain took a few seconds to be perplexed. "I… er, oh. Um, I'm fine. How are you doing, Kimiko?"  
  
"I am well. Thank you."  
  
X shook his head. "No need to be so formal, Kimiko. This isn't like the military."  
  
Kimiko looked confused. "Military? What do you mean?"  
  
Cain smiled. "What X is saying is that you can just call me Cain, or Doc, or something like that. You don't need to be formal with anyone here. It's more like a really big extended family than a workplace."\  
  
The brown-haired robot nodded. "I see. In that case, what do most people call you?"  
  
"Usually, Doc."  
  
Kimiko smiled. "Okay, 'Doc'. I believe I can do that." She turned to X. "So what would you prefer I called you, Ecksu-san?"  
  
"X is just fine, Kimiko. Now that we're done with that, we'll need to get you started here in the Maverick Hunters Headquarters. First order of business- a place to switch off at night."  
  
"Nan da?"  
  
"A room, Kimiko, a room."  
  
  
  
It was an empty room.  
  
Okay, okay, it wasn't TOTALLY empty. But it came close. There was a bed, a table, two chairs, a few doorways. One led to a closet, the other to a smaller, secondary room. There was a single halogen light in the ceiling, and it provided adequate lighting. There was a TV on a stand in one corner, and a bookcase along one wall.  
  
And that was it.  
  
It was almost as empty as the room she'd come here from.  
  
Even so, Kimiko mused, it was infinitely better. Because this room was hers.  
  
She had been amazed by how much of a walk it was from The Room, as the Maverick Hunters apparently called it, to the living areas. All the way, she had seen many, many reploids, the majority of whom were animalian in nature, although most of those were at least vaguely humanoid. What surprised her most was the little attention they paid her. Everyone took a moment to check her feet, seeing the Dash Boots, and then paid as much attention to her as to anyone else they didn't know. Which wasn't much. It had probably helped her be left alone that she was following X through the hallways.  
  
This place was amazing. One large hallway with numerous tiny offshoots, reploids and the occasional human either moving purposefully along, or just hanging around, staying out of the way of those who were obviously in the middle of working. She'd only half-listened to X's explanation about the non-human reploids.  
  
She turned back to X, who was looking around the room as well. He looked mildly wistful.  
  
"Just like my room was when I first got it." He said thoughtfully. Then he looked to Kimiko. "This will be your home so long as you work in the Maverick Hunters. As I said, you'll get a certain amount of pay, which you can use however you like. Most likely, you'll want to decorate your room a little first, personalize it some."  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Thank you, Ecksu." She said, bowing moderately.  
  
X nodded in return. "Second point of order is going to be your armor. You had some when you came here- we just need to see if Turk's done fixing it. He's our resident techie." X said, heading out the door.  
  
"Techie?" Echoed Kimiko, as she too stepped out.  
  
"It's a slang word. Means someone who likes or is good at technical-" X's voice was cut off as the door closed behind them. The light in the middle of the room flickered off automatically.  
  
  
  
X and Kimiko continued down the halls of the MHHQ, on their way to the equipment/repair bays.  
  
"There are a few things you should know about armor. Yours seems to be standard, so there shouldn't be any problems. Here's how it works. Your armor can be stored as data and mass in a properly prepared computer system, like the main computer at MHHQ. It can also be stored as a material object or set of objects anywhere with enough space. You and I, unlike many reploids, can remove our armor."  
  
"This isn't usual?"  
  
X shook his head, and continued. "No. Many people are unreasonably afraid of reploids. Therefore, they only construct reploids with built in armor. These reploids are stuck in their armor forever. It makes quite a few things inconvenient, such as trying to use a bed, or certain kinds of computers, etcetera. However, we can remove our armor. Whenever you need it, you can activate the Armor Warp command internally, and it will warp into place on your body. Whatever you were wearing is warped back, stored as data and matter, or physically stored, just like your armor. Incidentally, don't warp your armor until we've made sure it's repaired."  
  
Kimiko nodded, peering through a window at a room full of armored reploids as she walked past. Zero was standing in front of them, and looked like he was yelling at the top of his lungs. Two of the reploids in the front, holding bent plastic sabers, were looking rather sheepish. She passed the window, then, and lost her view of the class.  
  
X continued talking after stopping for a moment so Kimiko could catch up.  
  
"Now, your armor, like most others, consists of a few basic things. There's the helmet, to begin with. That, obviously, protects your head. More importantly, it protects the Control Chip in your forehead. The Control Chip is basically not only your brain, but your soul. As long as your Control Chip is intact, it's possible to rebuild you. Most helmets have a small crystal covering in the center of the forehead. This protects your Control Chip, while allowing heat generated by quick functioning to escape. If the crystal Control Chip cover is ever destroyed, you're in real trouble."  
  
Kimiko nodded, absently noting that the floor had begun to shake slightly.  
  
"The next part is the leg pieces. You'll notice that you're still wearing yours."  
  
Kimiko nodded again, wondering where the source of the growing vibrations was. It was beginning to get a bit difficult to walk.  
  
"Hold up a moment here, Kimiko. One of the big guys is coming through. See?"  
  
X pointed forward, and Kimiko gaped.  
  
There, maybe fifteen yards down the curving hallway, was the largest reploid she had ever seen. He was easily half as broad as the hallway, and colored a deep tan with forest-green highlights. He had a long, graceful neck, that was bent far over, as his shoulders almost reached the ceiling anyways. Each of his arms was as thick as a treetrunk, and his legs were maybe half again that wide. A long, thin tail trailed behind him. Each of his heavy, earthshaking steps carried him another yard and a half down the hall. As the massive reploid neared, he slowly ground to a halt. His neck bent further, bringing his head down to a conversational distance with X, the snoud giving him an almost ostritch-like appearance.  
  
"Afternoon, Commander." He stated, in a surprisingly high voice.  
  
X nodded back. "How are you doing, Stamp?"  
  
"Well enough. Who's the lady?"  
  
X smiled. "Stamp Apatasaurus, meet Kimiko. She's going to be starting training here tomorrow, hopefully joining my unit out on the field."  
  
Stamp swung his head lower for a moment, giving an approximation of a bow. "Nice to meet you, Kimiko."  
  
Kimiko bowed in return. "It is good to meet you as well, Stamp."  
  
Stamp turned his head to face X. "Shows potential, does she?"  
  
X chuckled. "You could say that. We've got to be going, though, if you don't mind…"  
  
Stamp smiled. "Ah. No problem at all. Good to see you still around, X." His head raised back up to its previous lofty height, and he resumed his trek down the hall, picking up speed at a surprising rate.  
  
Kimiko noted that as he continued, the hunters in the area cleared out of his way without hardly even looking up. Everyone stopped moving while he was in the area, though, so as not to knock themselves onto their own keisters.  
  
X watched Stamp continue as well. "Impressive, isn't he? He's one of our independents." He turned and continued on his own journey, now that the floor had stopped vibrating.  
  
"Independents?" Kimiko curiously queried, following X down the halls.  
  
X nodded. "Yes. They work alone, or maybe in teams of two or three. Most of the independents work alone or in small groups because, like Stamp, they can cause problems for those working with them without intending to. A few others just work better alone. Most of the independents are either really big, like Stamp, or are particularly small. Assault or infiltration- oriented reploids. Although more of the former than the latter."  
  
Kimiko looked thoughtful for a moment. "I can see why."  
  
"Anyways, as I was saying, you've probably noticed that you're still wearing your Dash Boots. That's because of the way the design works. The jets that grant dash capabilities are too bulky to put in as anything but an integral part of your leg. So, reploids with dash jets are stuck wearing their Dash Boots all the time, even if they can remove the rest of their armor. Some of us have holograph emitters installed so we can make our legs look more 'normal'."  
  
X turned, and headed up a flight of stairs, followed by Kimiko, and they quickly emerged into a hallway that was a near duplicate of the one below, although maybe half as tall. Probably, Kimiko assumed, because the really big guys couldn't go upstairs anyways.  
  
X resumed walking and talking. " Next up is the pelvic armor. Pretty simple. It's armor for your waist and hip area, to protect the joints. Straightforward and simple. Then there's the armbands. This is a little more complex, because they contain your busters. A buster, by the way, is a plasma cannon that mounts on your arm. The way that works is that the armbands of your armor have a 'glove' part that attatches to the outsides of your hands. In the forearms of a typical reploid are special seams where the arm can be temporarily severed without damaging anything. When you activate a buster, it pulls your hand and arm into itself, and puts out a barrel-end, and can then fire plasma shots at targets. It's actually a lot more complicated than that, but we'll leave that for the classes. Just a warning, never charge both busters at once- the fields used to contain the plasma will interfere with each other, and then with the busters, and you'll likely blow your own arms off."  
  
X stopped at a large door, and pressed a button to one side of it. The door opened, revealing a huge room, full of workbenches, mechanical things in all stages of assembly and disassembly, tools, random parts strewn here and there, and the constant sounds of technical officers and builders muttering, using power tools, and, occasionally, dropping things.  
  
"OW!!" Cried out a voice from the far side of the room. "THAT HIT MY FOOT, YOU NITWIT!!"  
  
X shook his head. "Don't mind her. Kei's always a little touchy when she's working on her guns."  
  
"YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU!"  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Okay."  
  
"COME BACK HERE! I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU, YURI!"  
  
The yelling subsided into a growled lecture, allowing conversation to continue.  
  
"Last of all is your chestplate. This includes the shoulder armor that's attatched to it. The most interesting thing about a chestplate, usually, is that it often contains doors that allow you to access your Chest Compartment. This is just what it sounds like, a place to hold things in your torso. The Chest Compartment also includes hookups for things like Heart Tanks, Subtanks, and Weapons Tanks."  
  
X stopped in front of a rather large door, that was plastered with signs reading "Main Projects", "Great Repairs: It's Fast Or It's Free", and "Keep Out, This Means You." He reached up and pressed the door buzzer.  
  
The small intercom on the door buzzed. "Yeah?" Asked a slightly staticked, basso-profundo voice. "Who is it?"  
  
X pressed the intercom button. "Pizza delivery. Someone ordered the Flintstones Special?"  
  
"Ah, Commander X. You brought the armor's owner, then?"  
  
"Yep. Can we come in now?"  
  
sigh"I suppose. Hold on a moment."  
  
There was a buzzing sound, and the door, which looked to be mounted on side- hinges, slowly ground down into the floor, until it's top left a small raised stair to the dimly-lit room behind it. A large, hulking figure was hunched over a workbench.  
  
"You're just in time." Stated the figure. "I'm doing the finishing touches now."  
  
  
  
Ah, so now things begin to go at speed. But what about the Mavericks?  
  
What's the whole of the evil plan?  
  
Wouldn't you like to know.  
  
Next chapter, Kimiko gets her armor, and then it's time for Basic Training!  
  
But X and Zero have a few missions during this time, since everything else won't come to a complete and total stop while they train Kimiko!  
  
By the way, it occurs to me that I forgot to put a disclaimer in so far. Oopsie. Okay, here it is.  
  
I don't own X, Zero, Cain, Sigma, Signas, Alia, Douglas, Lifesavor, or any of the other characters from the Capcom MMX games who will be appearing in this fic. Neither do I own anyone from the MM series who shows up. All the other characters, like Stamp Apatasaurus, Turk, Arnie, Turtlava, and most importantly Kimiko, are mine, and you can't have them. At least, not unless you ask me first. Oh, and I have to say it's okay when you ask me, too.  
  
Alright, that's taken care of now.  
  
Why did I put in Stamp? Well, look at all of the HUGE Mavericks in the MMX games. They have to come from somewhere, right?  
  
And as good of Mavericks as some of them make, there are probably at least a few Maverick Hunters that big, right?  
  
Right. Hence, large hallways in the MHHQ, and a few big guys like Stamp.  
  
Till next time. Ja ne!  
  
"This is a special watch. It tells the time, the date, the year, and the altitude. Wonderful watch. I simply cannot be without it. I have been, though. But not very well. Of course, it only has one hand.  
  
And with one hand missing, how can you tell if it's the big one or the little one?  
  
Which is probably why today is Tuesday the 84th of February.  
  
Ash Tuesday.  
  
1612.  
  
B.C.  
  
British Colombia? What is that doing in there?  
  
Last Friday, it was Easter Sunday on this watch. And after dinner, my neighbor came in and distributed Christmas gifts.  
  
Because he ALSO has one of these.  
  
He got the OTHER hand."  
  
-Victor Borge 


	6. On the Care and Nomenclature of Armor Se...

Of all the things Kimiko might have expected to see behind a huge, heavy metal door in the research and repairs bay of the MHHQ, a triceratops hunched over a computer and touch-typing was definitely not one of them.  
  
But he was there nonetheless. As she and X stopped a few feet back from him, Turk the reploid triceratops straightened up and turned slightly to look at them out of one squinty eye. All three of his horns were gleaming silver titanitefloalloy, and his skull shield was a magnificent pale red, almost pink. The rest of him was all heavily armored, unlike with most reploids, so there were no cables and no bodysuit areas showing past his pale blue hide. On either hand was a strange extendor, obviously extra, that gave him a second, human-sized pair of hands that mimicked the movements of his own massive manipulators. Using one false hand, he removed the other one, extending his real left hand to Kimiko.  
  
"Good afternoon kid. I'm Turk, the resident technical genius."  
  
A little doll with an 'A' on its shirt popped up on one of his shoulders. "The greatest scientist in the universe!" It squeaked.  
  
Its mirror, with a 'B' on its own shirt, popped up on Turk's other shoulder. "Yes indeed!" It piped in, in the same voice as the first.  
  
Turk had the grace to look embarassed as he hit a button, shutting off the dolls, which he then placed on the desk.  
  
X chuckled. "You watch Tenchi Muyo way too much, Turk."  
  
Turk shrugged. "What can I say? It's inspirational." He extended his hand again. "I believe we were at 'Good afternoon, kid'."  
  
Kimiko looked at his hand, puzzled.  
  
Turk sounded distinctly disappointed. "Don't you know how to shake hands?"  
  
Kimiko blinked. "Shake hands?"  
  
Turk sighed. "Put your hand in mine."  
  
Kimiko did so. The much larger hand of the head of the Repair/Construction division of the Tech department engulfed her own, clasping gently around it. Turk pumped her hand twice, and let go, putting his own hand back down at his side.  
  
Kimiko blinked, and shrugged. Then she bowed. "I am Kimiko. It is good to meet you." Straightening, she continued. "Sorry, if I offended you."  
  
Turk chuckled. "No problem, kid. Anyways, I've got your armor finished for you. You can use it anytime."  
  
Kimiko nodded, and turned to X, quirking up one brown eyebrow. The blue Hunter nodded back, and Kimiko closed her eyes for a moment.  
  
Armor warp.  
  
Complying.  
  
There was a flash of green, and her armor appeared on her, simultaneous with the disappearance of her clothes.  
  
X stared at her helmet for a moment, while Turk and Kimiko inspected the armor, one for mistakes, the other to get a good idea what it looked like.  
  
Kimiko was still wearing her green Dash Boots, but now the tops could be seen. Where most reploids had a small outcropping on the front of the top of their boots to protect their knees, she instead had one on the outside of either knee. Either one of the upwards-jutting pieces of material had a shallow, conical metal disc on the outside of it. Her thighs were thick with myomer 'muscles', nearly as wide as the tops of her Dash Boots. Where X's pelvic guard had a dip in the center of it, hers stuck upwards slightly, with a band of silver running from front to back between her legs to the width of the upcropping. The rest of the pelvic piece was green. Either arm was equipped with a Buster sleeve, with typical elbow guards. Marking them as different were a pair of lavender, ovoid crystals on either side of the sleeves, near the elbows. Also, the wrist guard extending from the front of either one came to a point and a blunt edge at the same time. Her chest plate was slightly more intricate than a typical one. Either breast was covered by a distinct layer of metal, divided by a line down the middle, and a set of parenthetical seams marking off the center half of the chest plate. The layers of armor over her breasts continued over her shoulders, overlapping in the back, before coming down to end at her sides, at the bottom of the chest plate. Most interesting to X was her helmet. Where most human-type reploids had a downward-pointing triangular crystal Control Chip cover, hers, a soft lavender, pointed up. She had a crest much like X, but where his was a solid piece, hers had seams along it, dividing it into sections crosswise. Her 'ear' vents were slightly higher and farther back than normal, both a solid silver in color. The bottom back of her helmet was missing, allowing her braid to hang free. The braid itself had had its tie replaced by a green armor ring with a spike protruding from it to either side. Her helmet, while similar to X's, was slightly different- while his curved down to brace against his jaw, Kimiko's helmet went straight down, ending just above her shoulders, even with her small shoulderpads. Additionally, the opening for her face was more curved, flat along the bottom of the purple crystal before arcing up and over either eye, then dropping straight down to the end of the helmet. The entire thing was in shades of light green, over a soft lavender bodysuit.  
  
X blinked, and snapped out of it. She really was based off the same designs- her armor was only a slightly more complex design than his, and the helmet was very much like his own.  
  
Turk nodded to himself. "Good, looks like I got that right. Something interesting you should know about, though, kid."  
  
Kimiko looked up at the large reploid. "Yes?"  
  
"Well," began Turk, as X looked over to listen to him, "Most reploids have the chest compartment opening in the center of their chest- hence the name 'chest compartment'."  
  
X nodded. "It's different for her?"  
  
Turk shook his head. "Almost too different. When I figured it out, though, I was surprised. Kimiko, raise your arms and open your compartment, please."  
  
Kimiko nodded, and raised her arms. With a slight hiss of hydraulics, a piece of armor from under either arm separated and slid outwards, revealing two 'drawers' reminiscent of a filing cabinet, with a series of connector ports lining the bottom.  
  
The green reploid blinked, and looked under one arm, into the drawer, examining the connections.  
  
X rubbed his chin. "Interesting. Certainly a bit safer, I think."  
  
Turk nodded. "Plus, it's hard to break open, so…"  
  
X looked up at the dinosaurian reploid. "What about the other armor?"  
  
Turk gestured to where the formerly outer layer of armor was hanging on a frame, the large chunk still missing. The armor was almost totally covered with a network of cracks and burns, and the fins, toe, and knee-spikes hadn't been replaced. "I can't repair that. It's totally toast. Even if I knew which materials to use for what, that part of it's been totally vaporized. There's no way to know how to rebuild the circuitry, or reconstruct the data. By the way, are you done with the cape-pin? I wanted to see what it was for."  
  
Kimiko closed her chest compartment-drawers, and looked over at the Armor Set, hanging there in three pieces.  
  
X shook his head. "Sorry- it kind of self-destructed."  
  
Turk blinked. "Any clue why?"  
  
"Not really." Answered Kimiko. "Turk- what is this?"  
  
Turk looked at X, who nodded. "That," began the large dinosaurian, striding over to the armor, "Is the armor you were wearing when you came here, outside the armor you have on now. It's a very strange design. It's like someone combined an assault suit with infiltration-style equipment, only not very well."  
  
X followed him, standing a ways behind Kimiko, as she continued examining the defunct Armor Set.  
  
"Have you figured out any of the stuff in it yet?" He asked, staring at the helmet.  
  
Turk chuckled. "Only so far as what it's supposed to do. This is Light- level technology. I can no more reproduce this than that lovely Gold Hyper suit that you got. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out the Mark 20 Buster upgrade from that Retribution set. I tell ya, X, Light really knew what he was doing- this stuff is COMPLEX."  
  
The New Blue Bomber nodded. "But who could have made something up to the degree of technology Light used?"  
  
Turk shrugged. "Beats me. Whoever it was wasn't quite sure what they were doing, though. This suit is far from seamless. That's why the Buster came off at the end of the fight- it's a separate, plug-in system."  
  
X looked up at Turk. "Then it still works?"  
  
"Nope. This thing fried it's own circuitry once the user was knocked into stasis."  
  
"Deep Shade." Said Kimiko.  
  
The other two Hunters looked over at her.  
  
Kimiko nodded to herself. "Call it Deep Shade. I would like this stored somewhere."  
  
"A dead suit of armor?"  
  
Kimiko nodded to Turk. "It's something that we don't know where it's from. It reminds me of Otoosan, for some reason. Maybe if I keep it around, I can look at it from time to time, maybe regain a few memories."  
  
Turk shrugged. "Your storage space, if you really want to use some of it for that, go right ahead."  
  
Kimiko bowed once. "Thank you, Turk."  
  
Turk shrugged. "Aaah. Alright you two, out of my lab. I've got work waiting. I'll see to it that the armor is stored in your personal space, Kimiko."  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Thank you again."  
  
She and X turned and stepped out of the lab, the door sliding back up into place behind them.  
  
  
  
Okay, so the next chapter right away. I just got in the mood to write.  
  
And didn't stop.  
  
So, Kimiko's keeping the armor, now called Deep Shade, even though it's defunct.  
  
Did she remember anything from looking at it?  
  
When will she begin training?  
  
What about the vaunted Island Maverick plot?  
  
Are there going to be more missions for X and Zero in the meantime?  
  
What will they do if both of them have to go on a mission at the same time?  
  
Who did make Kimiko?  
  
Will Stamp, Arnie or Turtlava make a return appearance ever?  
  
Will I tell you why I put these questions at the ends of my fanfics?  
  
Probably not, 'cos I don't know myself.  
  
Oh, well.  
  
If it gets too annoying, say so.  
  
By the way, in answer to that one review, I have to ask…  
  
What Doppler connection?  
  
Till next time- Ja ne!  
  
"When criminals in this world appear  
  
And break the laws that they should fear,  
  
And frighten all who see or hear,  
  
The cry goes up both far and near  
  
For Underdog!  
  
(Underdog!)  
  
Underdog!  
  
(Underdog!)  
  
Speed of lightning!  
  
Roar of thunder!  
  
Fighting all who  
  
Rob or plunder!  
  
Underdog!  
  
(ooh-aah-aah-ahh-ahh- Underdog!)  
  
When in this world the headlines read  
  
Of those whose hearts are filled with greed  
  
Who rob and steal from those in need,  
  
To right this wrong with blinding speed  
  
Goes Underdog!  
  
(Underdog!)  
  
Underdog!  
  
(Underdog!)  
  
Speed of lightning!  
  
Roar of thunder!  
  
Fighting all who  
  
Rob or plunder!  
  
Underdog!  
  
(ooh-aah-aah-ahh-ahh- Underdog!)  
  
Underdog!  
  
- Theme song, "Underdog" (a really cool cartoon). 


	7. Finding Pieces of Yourself

"Meanwhile, on an island somewhere in the general area of the Pacific, the brave and valiant Island Irregulars. Do you think I should use Irregulars or Mavericks? I mean, Irregulars sounds better, but Mavericks IS the official title. Or maybe I should just use 'the brave and valiant heroes'? What do you think? Huh?"  
  
Gale looked up from the map she was sitting in front of.  
  
"I think, String, that you should stop trying to be String Shakespeare and start HELPING ME FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS!!! I swear, noone is going to NEED you to write this down as it's happening! You want to write about it, write about it after we win."  
  
The brown, semi-insectoid Reploid looked up from the datapad he had been dictating to. "What? What's wrong with keeping a record? After all, if we fail, something will need to be around to say what not to do, right?"  
  
Gale sighed, exasperated, and put down her compass. "Except that we aren't GOING to fail, String. We're doing this better, faster, and quieter than any of the previous Maverick Uprisings, and this time, Buster Boy and Captain Saber won't stand a chance. But we'll never be ready if you don't start taking this seriously! I swear, this is like a hobby to you. I've half a mind to remove your tail and use it to flog you with."  
  
String tossed the pad over his shoulder, where it bounced and skidded under a set of databanks. "Why don't you? Come on, I'm game."  
  
Gale reached for her beam-fork. "Why, you."  
  
KKXHHHT  
  
Both Maverick Generals snapped to attention, looking up at the large viewscreen, which now showed a wireframe image of Sigma's head.  
  
^Report, please.^  
  
"Well, sir, we're-" "I'd like to say that-"  
  
Gale glared at String, who shut up.  
  
"As I was saying, sir, we're having a bit of trouble getting proper supplies to one of the islands- I really don't think Thunder and Cutter can deal with an attack yet, if one were to happen."  
  
^What is the difficulty? I thought you had a plan worked out!^  
  
Gale grimaced. "Apologies, but as it turns out, so long as Thunder keeps trying to stay in the forested area, about half of it is constantly on fire- there's no way to ensure the survival of the robots he requests once they get in there. He simply refuses to stay out of the forest, and I have no idea why. Also, I'm not quite sure how to set up the main base, sir."  
  
^Hm. I will personally speak to Thunder Toad, so you don't need to worry there. As for the base- do you still have the plans for the Arctic Fortress from the second Uprising on file?^  
  
String held up a datapad. "Right here, sir."  
  
^Excellent. See if you can't do something similar, but with an aquatic fortress. As a matter of fact, get Freeze to work on it- if you can make it truly cold in there, we'll have a serious surprise for anyone trying to get involved.^  
  
String nodded. "I'll talk to him right away, sir."  
  
^Good. I'll check up on you again in roughly 36 hours. See that at least one thing is dealt with.^  
  
"Of course, sir."  
  
^Sigma out.^  
  
The screen flickered off, and String turned to Gale, only to find that she wasn't there anymore. A moment later, he was hoisted up off the floor by a firm hand around his neck. The tall reploid's other hand was wrapped around his tail, preventing him from using it to get free.  
  
"Now, String, remember- if we don't do well enough, Sigma may decide to DELETE US. If he does, I will personally shred EVERY LAST ONE of your circuits, slowly, while you are still conscious. DO YOU UNDERSTAND??"  
  
String nodded as best he could.  
  
"Good. I'm going to go get work started on the fortress."  
  
The stout brown reploid fell to the floor with a heavy clanging. He waited until he was sure Gale was gone, then got up.  
  
"I swear, why Sigma paired me off with THAT uncultured birdbrain, I'll never know."  
  
Kimiko walked down the hall, glancing at the door numbers as she passed them. She was wearing her armor, and carrying a set of datapads. She supposed she could have put them in her chest compartment, but she really didn't want to have to explain her odd compartment to anyone. For some reason, she was really nervous. The feeling was oddly. familiar.  
  
"203 F.. 203 F." She murmured to herself, continuing down the sixth floor hall.  
  
'We're putting you in a special program, Kimiko,' X had said. 'You're going to have the normal classes and exercises with the other fresh Hunters. Then, after those classes, you'll have special sessions with me or Zero, alternating. I'll be giving you the recent history stuff you're missing, teaching you how to deal with Mavericks, and teaching you about effective Buster use. Zero will give you information of a slightly more. technical bent, and will be teaching you about group tactics and close combat, particularly with beam sabers. By the way, if you want, you can use the shop to make your own beam weapon, once you can learn how. First, of course, you'll be using a normal booth to learn the things that most Reploids get to learn right off the bat- history, and things like that. The pads are for personal notes, journals, whatever you want to put down in file.'  
  
X himself had been unable to see her to the appropriate room, however- he needed to spend the morning on standard maintenance for his unit- equipment and otherwise.  
  
Dodging around a short, stocky reploid, Kimiko finally spotted the room. She walked up to the door, paused for a moment as it slid open with a subtle mechanical hiss, and stepped in, ignoring the confused glances some of the Hunters in the hall were giving her.  
  
Kimiko looked up and down the rows of terminals for an empty spot. Finding one near the back, she headed for it.  
  
As she moved to sit down, she stopped in surprise- Zero was up at the front of the room, watching over the many reploids at the learning terminals. As she looked up at him, he nodded slightly at her.  
  
Not sure what to think of that, Kimiko sat down at the terminal, setting the pads on the small tablespace, and reaching for the datacable. As she moved it to her right hand, she noticed that the surface of the white glove parted, as well as her synthskin underneath.  
  
Plugging the cable into her systems, there was no tangible feeling, but something in her mind seemed to go-  
  
--click-  
  
-click-  
  
-click-  
  
"Hmmph."  
  
-click-  
  
-click-  
  
"Dangit!!"  
  
-click-  
  
-click-  
  
"Aargh!"  
  
-SNAP-  
  
"Ah. Thunder?"  
  
"WHAT?!?!??"  
  
The purplish-blue reploid that resembled nothing so much as an animated add for Shell gasoline winced.  
  
"I don't think that's how you're supposed to use an arc-welder."  
  
The yellow-green toad-reploid glared at his 'companion', the sphere-topped antennae behind his eyes emitting sparks.  
  
"Well, excuse ME, MISTER technological expert!! But I don't see YOU helping to rebuild Master Sigma!"  
  
Cutter Clam sighed, turned, and walked calmly out of the lab. Descending the long, spiral stairway, he eventually exited the tower. Tucking legs, arms, and head into his shockingly-yellow body, he skimmed along the nearby river towards the beach. Coming to a stop on the delta, he re-emerged from his shell, and looked out over the heavily modified shipyard.  
  
"I swear, that guy probably had a few connections broken BEFORE he became Irregular, if you ask me."  
  
"Oh, he did. I know that for a fact."  
  
Cutter jumped. "YAAH!"  
  
Whirling, he raised an arm, forming a crescent of plasma. Then he saw who was behind him. "Cheez! Do you HAVE to do that?"  
  
The figure in menacing deep violet chuckled, staring back with a glowing red gaze.  
  
MatinaHornerwasbornin1939toGreekparents,whodecidedtostayintheUnitedStatesaft ertheoutbreakofWorldWarIISherecievedherbachelor'sdegreefromBrynMawrCollegein 1961andthenattendedtheUniversityofMichi-  
  
-click-  
  
Suddenly, the stream of data broke, and Kimiko's external senses shut off. She didn't even have time to panic before she found herself floating in a void, but standing at the same time.  
  
Looking around, she saw only blackness, aside from herself. But that didn't make sense- if she could see herself, there was light coming from somewhere..  
  
"Why don't they trust me/us?"  
  
Spinning, she came face to face with.  
  
Nothing.  
  
"Have we/I done something wrong?"  
  
Kimiko looked slightly down, to see a young girl standing in front of her. Looking maybe 7 or 8, the girl had soft-brown hair pulled back in a braid that went halfway down her back, and was wearing a Japanese school uniform- a sailor seifuku.  
  
The girl tilted her head back, and two pairs of soft violet eyes met. There was a sudden feeling of vertigo and duplicity, and Kimiko and the girl simultaneously staggered back slightly.  
  
"I. I know you."  
  
Straightening, she blinked, wondering which of them had said that.  
  
Or was it both?  
  
Something was wrong with the scene. it was. it was.  
  
Suddenly, Kimiko looked the girl dead on.  
  
"You. you're the face in the mirror."  
  
The girl nodded. "Hai! Atashi wa Kimiko desu!"  
  
"but.."  
  
-crash-  
  
The girl shattered like glass, and the pieces faded out even as they flew at Kimiko.  
  
There was a sense of something found. Kimiko blinked. That WAS her.  
  
She could remember now, remember being small, and-  
  
-click-  
  
-what was going on? She sat up, blinking. Zero was there, holding the cable, which wasn't plugged into her hand anymore. Kimiko instinctively recoiled for a moment, then controlled herself.  
  
"-at happened to you? Are you alright?" Zero asked, frowning. A couple of security troops were on their way just in case, but X wanted him to trust her more than that.  
  
"Ano- sorry, Zero-san." Kimiko answered, slightly dazed. "I just- something happened."  
  
Zero put the cable down and stood up. "I think you should go back to the medical bay. A couple of people will be here in a moment to take you down there- don't worry, I just have to stay here."  
  
Kimiko nodded absently. What had happened? She didn't recall. only, she remembered having been smaller once. That was. that was a new memory. But what had happened when she was using the terminal? One moment, she was getting a datafeed, then- Zero holding the cable.  
  
Her internal chronometer told her that four minutes had passed between those points- and she didn't remember them.  
  
As she stood up and followed the two security guards to the medical bay, one question echoed through her head over and over.  
  
What happened?  
  
Ah-HA! The plot sickens! I mean, thickens.  
  
Gradually, Kimiko begins to gain bits and shreds of memory. Will she find out the whole story?  
  
What does Zero think of what's going on, really? Why was he in the room?  
  
Who met Cutter Clam down at the delta?  
  
Why do I bother asking questions the readers don't know the answers to?  
  
BECAUSE I DO!!!  
  
Wahahaha!  
  
::eyes her evil twin suspiciously:: Riiiight.  
  
Anywhich, more coming soon. As for this, I just had the urge to write more (finally), and picked it up and ran with it.  
  
By the by, if anyone reading this HASN'T read any of Erico's Megaman X fanfics, then I have to insist you do so. They are. inspirational to say the least.  
  
(evil twin) Waiii! He's so cool! I have to have his liver!  
  
::pulls a rope, evil twin is crushed by forty-thousand ton weight, leaving a noticeable hole::  
  
::sighs:: The things I have to endure.  
  
Oh, well. Until next time! Jaa, ne!  
  
("And our hero did proceed to begin a great swan dive. Now- before we continue, we shall think about something. Don't worry about our hero- we'll put him in suspended animation. He won't fall. Now, what is he diving into?" "A lake." "Right. Now, how do lakes form?" "Well, usually, you have ice melt in the mountains, which turns to water, then it flows downhill, and collects and all." "Right. Now, does the water ever really get warm?" "No." "So, our hero is diving into what?" "TWELVE DEGREES.") -Excerpt, Bill Cosby, Niagara Falls, from the CD 'Wonderfullness'. 


	8. It's All an Illusion....

Once again, Kimiko was wandering the halls of the MHHQ, this time heading for one of the combat training rooms.  
  
It had been several days since the incident at the terminal. Gatstar hadn't been able to find anything wrong with her, and the strange series of events hadn't repeated themselves. For the remainder of her visits to the terminal rooms, Zero or X had always been on watch, and for the first one after the incident, there had also been a single guard assigned to watch over her.  
  
But, nothing had gone wrong. By the end of the next day, she had finished her sessions with the learning terminal, and now knew as much as any other fresh reploid- perhaps a bit more, all things considered.  
  
It was a bit unusual, Kimiko considered, as she continued along the first floor hall, but since the incident she had been able to occasionally grasp bits of memory from before. Nothing large, and the memories were somewhat fragmented, but she could often remember things like visits to zoos, a trip into a national park, a few select moments of school.  
  
Most importantly, though, she could remember that she HAD been smaller once, had looked like a child. The reasons why she had, however, were still well beyond her.  
  
Either way, she was now well into the regular classes for Maverick Hunter trainees, and was heading to her third 'special session' with X.  
  
With a soft hiss, the door to the room opened, and she stepped in.  
  
The small cleaning robot waited a few more seconds. Once the program had finished downloading, the robot resumed its normal functions as a small purge-program removed itself and the original of the download from the robot's memory.  
  
Boron nodded to himself, and grinned slightly. Mission accomplished. The program was in place, and would be a very nasty surprise for anyone who-  
  
"What's so funny?"  
  
Thoughts interrupted, Boron shook his head and looked up at the Lieutenant. "Hmm?"  
  
Ochre stared down at the smaller, yellow reploid. "I said, what's so funny? You were grinning."  
  
"Oh, just an old joke I remembered. You probably wouldn't get it- you kinda had to be there."  
  
"Ah. Anyways, thanks for taking over while Verde's busy."  
  
"Don't mention it. The old bugger needed some time off anyways. I figure I'm doing a favor to anyone who he woulda grumped at otherwise."  
  
Ocher 'The Ogre' nodded. Verdegris had always been a bit of a crotchety old man, although he was very good with the janitorial duties.  
  
"Oh, there you are. Are you ready? This is going to be a little more difficult than the previous times using this." X gestured to the control panel he had been operating. "Last time was practice on moving targets that 'shoot' back, so now it's a little bit of a step up. I'm going to put you through an actual training simul- There are going to be a number of opponents, and I'm going to grade you on how well you get through the course. Just in case something goes wrong, I'm going to stay in here with you."  
  
Kimiko nodded, and ran the standard short diagnostic she always did before a training session. They were recommended, and she wasn't about to take any chances.  
  
"Also," continued X, returning his attention to the control panel, "If you think you need a breather, just give me a shout- I'll pause the simul and give you a short wait. It'll bring your grade down, but don't worry- you're not expected to blow through the whole thing in one go on your first try. Are you ready?"  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Hai. I am ready."  
  
X nodded, picked up his helmet from where it had been resting by his feet, and put it on. He activated the helmet's comm.  
  
"Beginning simulation in three.."  
  
"two.."  
  
"one."  
  
"Gotcha." Stated Boron, triumphantly.  
  
Ocher shook his head. He should have known anyone volunteering for janitor duty would be a tad loopy about getting the job done. Heaving a faintly mechanical sigh, he turned and headed for the hangar. Might as well do a tune-up of his personal landchaser.  
  
The training room seemed to twitch, and then twisted into something else.  
  
Looking around, Kimiko realized this was supposed to be some sort of an old factory, and she was standing in the entrance. There appeared to be a lot of sand around, and the pile of slag nearby seemed to have been made by a landchaser crashing into something. One last glance behind at what seemed to be an area of desert with a mostly-covered road, and she stepped forward, walking carefully in through the large orange gates.  
  
Kimiko immediately set her buster to charging, ready to fire at anything as she walked along the rocky surface. Before too long, she came to a section of metal. Examining the area before her, she saw a small raised section of floor and a lowered ceiling, creating a sort of doorway. She cautiously stepped forwards.  
  
There was a sudden grinding sound as some sort of a robot attatched to the ceiling ratcheted down it's lower half, blocking off the doorway entirely. Kimiko waited a moment, but it did not fire at her. Apparently it was only there to block off the path. Loosing her blue supershot, she followed up with a peppering of normal plasma 'bullets'. The blocker-robot exploded, easily reduced to scrap. She started her buster charging again, once more walking. She hopped easily through the doorway.  
  
Immediately she saw it. It was a small, purplish robot with what seemed to be a large screwdriver attatched to its nose. It hopped towards her and she reflexively fired her supershot, vaporising it. She was already charging again when a second one hopped down from a raised floor area in front of her, and that one was also quickly annihilated. This was followed by another doorway and blocker robot, which was easily dealt with. In accordance with both the rules of combat and common sense, she kept her buster charging. Another two Scrivers and one last barrier robot went down before she reached the larger, open-walled main area of the factory. Keeping alert, she idly noted the huge leg-pieces lined up on a rack off to one side.  
  
As Kimiko made a dash-jump off the first short fall, a small helicopter- robot dived at her, and she again reflexively vaporized it. The second one missed her just as badly as she missed it, and she landed in some sort of an open-ended orange box. To Kimiko's surprise, when she tried to step out of the box, her feet stayed firmly attatched to the floor. There was a soft whine, and a pair of metallic pincers materialized on the floor, then knocked her down as they slid along a strange, magnetic floor. Getting back up, Kimiko ran out of the box, hopping up to stand on top of it, where she wouldn't be trapped.  
  
She stood there for a moment, watching pair after pair of metal claws form, and then slide away along the floor. She checked her Simulated Internal Operations Energy, wincing at the reading of 86%. She would have to be more careful. Waiting until a set of claws had just departed and she had a full Buster charge, Kimiko hopped down, dashing to another box and hopping atop of that as well. Another helicopter-drone dove at her, and she was forced to jump back as she fired, landing just barely on the edge of the orange construct. As she built up another charge, she watched a pair of claws get a body added to it.  
  
Apparently this thing was a construction line for the flying hover-robots.  
  
And how many, exactly, had she just allowed to slide past her?  
  
With an uneasy feeling, Kimiko ran and dash-jumped to the last box, to be faced with a small batch of the flying drones. En masse, they all dove at her.  
  
Frantically, she laid down a flurry of panicked Buster shots in front of her, slagging the unfortunate hoverdrones. As she paused to catch her breath, another high-pitched whine caught her attention just before yet another drone popped up in front of her. Distracted, she was unable to dodge as the drone crashed into her before pulling up to hover just below the ceiling.  
  
Getting up, Kimiko let loose a few small shots, scrapping the drone. Then she got an idea. Building a charge in her buster, she jumped down to one side of the box and fired into it, melting the constructive machinery.  
  
X frowned. Kimiko wasn't doing as well as he had on the real thing. On the other hand, he had been hopped up on rage and more experienced when he'd gone into the red herring base at the beginning of the Second Maverick Uprising. Hopefully, she'd do better with the rest of the simul.  
  
Kimiko grimaced as she ran forward, charging her buster. So far, she had gone slow, and every time she'd paused to look around, something had caught her unawares. Obviously, a more aggressive strategy was in order.  
  
klink  
  
Kimiko blinked. Where had that claw come from?  
  
The claw swung her out over a small pit filled with sparking scrap metal, and attempted to drop her into the middle of it.  
  
As Kimiko fell, she saw she could just barely reach the wall if she stretched, and do a wall-grab to avoid landing on the dangerous junk. Much to her surprise, she was pulled short as she suffered a sharp pain on the back of her head.  
  
X just stared. He couldn't believe it. Instead of the claw dropping Kimiko, and the green reploid catching onto the wall over the scrap-pit, her long braid had gotten caught on the claw, leaving her dangling from the machine over a dangerous pit of sharp electrified objects.  
  
As the claw swung back over the ground on the starting side of the pit, Kimiko managed to put her feet down. With the claw at its lowest point, she reached up and unhooked her spiked braid-ornament from the claw. Before the machine could act to grab her again, she dash-jumped over the pit, landing safely on the other side. She frowned as she paused for a moment. She would have to remember in the future to watch out for that kind of thing.  
  
Kimiko ran forward into a large room containing only a ladder going up. With a couple of careful wall-jumps, she was able to reach the short ladder, climbing up into an odd shaft. Looking up, she saw a strange helicopter-robot, different from the previous ones, fly away upwards. Kimiko took a moment to try and puzzle it out, but was interrupted as the walls began to shake. With a start, she realized that she seemed to be in some sort of garbage compactor- the walls were closing in! Quickly as she could, Kimiko hopped up one wall, grabbing onto it with the claws that sprouted from her wrist for just such a purpose.  
  
Short on time, Kimiko drew up an unusual innovation- rather than jumping up one wall, she made a long series of rebounding dash-jumps, spiraling up the closing shaft. Just before the walls closed completely, she reached a small section where there was enough space for her. Looking up, she saw the small helicopter robot fly upwards and away, deeper into the factory.  
  
X sighed in relief. For a moment, he had been afraid he would have to stop the simul- Kimiko had just barely avoided an unhappy end for the simul with her interesting tactic. X noted the method of climbing away for later use- it was an innovation he hadn't seen before, and seemed to be very effective.  
  
Kimiko ran forwards, climbing yet another ladder. She noted, with some surprise, what seemed to be a huge purple robot midway through construction in the background. As she ran down the corridor past that and another one, she had to make several short hops to avoid piles of wiring and parts. Then one final dash-jump off a short drop and over one last pile of circuit boards, and-  
  
-she found herself falling down a long shaft. With a yelp of surprise, Kimiko reached out and latched onto the wall, gripping-claws once again extending. Again she spiral-dash-rebounded up the shaft until she was safely standing on top of it again. Peering back down the shaft, she saw a gate of some sort down at the bottom of a long drop. Kimiko looked around. Other than back the way she came, down was the only way to go.  
  
Without any sort of prelude, Kimiko turned and jumped, falling straight down the middle of the shaft. She noted that the gate at the bottom opened to let her through, then closed even as she fell into the room below. Buster fully charged, she waited, looking around. She was standing on a girder, one of a large set composing scaffolding that spanned the walls of the large underground room.  
  
Suddenly, something fell from above. Kimiko turned and drew a bead, stopping just short of firing.  
  
X saluted her and hopped off to one corner of the room. "Good luck!" He called out.  
  
Kimiko looked around again, confused. "Nan da? Luck with what?"  
  
Suddenly, a huge shadow fell. It was soon followed by one of the enormous purple robots that Kimiko had seen being constructed. It was easily fifty feet high, with a huge round body and a horn-finned head. Not bothering to take time to gape, Kimiko let fly with the level 3 charged shot, following up with a salvo of small plasma shot.  
  
To her dismay, all of the shots dissipated harmlessly across the robot's rotund torso and strange arms. In a surprisingly swift motion, the gigantic robot- 'Mechaniroid', her memory served up without prompting- swung one of its arms at her. Leaping over the long chain of connected metal spheres Kimiko let loose another volley of shots at potential weak spots- shoulders, waist, the yellow lumps on its torso, and even one or two at the arms where the spheres linked up. These shots, too, dissipated against what was obviously a titanitefloalloy, or perhaps some other sort of plasma-resistant, skin.  
  
Kimiko quickly began running around the walls of the room, jumping from girder to girder, managing to stay out from in front of the huge robot, as she tried to figure out what else she could do, since the plasma shots didn't seem to be working.  
  
Obviously, shooting it isn't going to work- it's plasma-resistant, and plasma's all that I have. I can't knock it over- it's too massive. And I certainly can't punch it out or anything, I'm not strong enough..  
  
Then it hit her. Or rather, it hit the girder behind her. The huge robot pulled up its arm, removing the large spiked ball from the metal surface. Kimiko frowned in concentration. The other arm swung around, aimed straight for her. Kimiko jumped and clung to the wall, then, just before the huge ball could hit her, she made a long, dashing jump, landing atop the robot's head, holding onto both of the horn-like projections atop it.  
  
Still focused on her, the robot left its one arm embedded in the wall, and swung the other in a long arc. Up, over, and.  
  
Kimiko again dash-jumped out of the way, not quite fast enough this time. The descending mace-arm clipped her feet, sending her tumbling to a rough landing on one of the girders. The Mechaniroid, however, wasn't so lucky. It stood still for a moment, the mashed remains of its head spitting sparks past the spiked ball embedded there, before it's legs collapsed out from under it, and it fell, dragging its one arm out of the wall, and landing with a ground-shaking boom.  
  
X hopped along the girders to stand next to Kimiko, and looked over the edge of the scaffolding, peering down at the nonfunctional Mechaniroid.  
  
"Wow." He said, as Kimiko got up. "You know, I don't think anyone's ever tried doing that, before? Good job!"  
  
Kimiko grinned. "Arigatoo, Ecksu."  
  
"So," began X, turning to her, "What does your SIOE read at?"  
  
"Um. Eighty percent."  
  
X nodded, noting it down. "That's good for a first time. On your next try, you'll probably make it without taking any damage, if you remember what not to do. Ready to try again?"  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Ready."  
  
"Okay. Computer? Reset program."  
  
Nothing happened. Kimiko looked expectantly at X.  
  
X frowned. "Computer, reset program."  
  
Worried, X girder-hopped to what should have been the right spot. However, when he reached for the control panel, it wasn't there.  
  
"Computer! Control panel!" X barked.  
  
"I'm sorry." Said a disturbingly soft, male voice. "I can't let you do that, Jim."  
  
Then the room flickered and twisted..  
  
Uh-oh. Now what's going on?  
  
You'll see. You'll see.  
  
Oh, and by the way, REVIEW, PEOPLE!!!  
  
Sheesh. No new reviews since chapter 4? I mean, really!  
  
Okay, until next time, Ja ne!  
  
"Look, it's Mr. Clean!" "Uh, that's Sigma." "Awww, craaaaaap..." -You don't wanna know 


	9. Or is it Reality?

Kimiko looked around, confused. X had just given the command to reset the Simulator, but nothing was happening. He went for the control panel, but was answered by a soft, male voice.  
  
"I'm sorry. I can't let you do that, Jim."  
  
And then the room flickered and twisted...  
  
And it wasn't a room anymore.  
  
X and Kimiko looked around again, realizing that they seemed to be standing on some highway or other.  
  
"What the hell?"  
  
There was a dry cackle, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Kimiko shivered as a chill ran down her spine. The laugh itself wasn't particularly disturbing, but the voice doing the laughing..  
  
A grating voice emanated from everywhere at once. "Well, well. If it isn't the little boy blue. We had hoped, of course, but it's great to see you here! Why don't you come and find out what's going on, X? Oh, and any friends you've got along with you might want to prepare. this isn't a game. Not anymore."  
  
Kimiko looked to X. "Ecksu-san, what is going on?"  
  
X shook his head. "I don't know, Kimiko, but it's giving me a bad feeling." He switched on his helmet comm. "This is X to MHHQ, do you read? Hello? ...Is anybody there?"  
  
A frown crossed X's face. "I hate to say it, but I think we're locked in- and the comm block is still in place."  
  
Kimiko nodded. "What was that about this not being a game, though?"  
  
X's frown deepened. "I don't know for sure, but I'll bet whoever did this also turned the simul all the way up- there's no point to just putting someone in stasis, this program's probably set to destroy. I think you should turn off your SIOE."  
  
Kimiko nodded, turning off the simul-interface program, returning her buster to normal power levels and causing her display to revert to real Internal Operations Energy. Nodding to herself, she returned her attention to the world around- and tackled X to the ground.  
  
An instant later, a huge blast of plasma flew over them, missing by inches, then ate a wide crater into the road surface.  
  
Propping herself up to look, one hand on the road, one on X's chestplate, Kimiko gaped for an instant before hopping to her feet.  
  
"What is THAT thing??"  
  
X rolled over onto his front, also popping up into a standing position. He stared, jaw hanging somewhat slack, until a large cannon fired.  
  
The two prereploids dived in either direction.  
  
X shouted over the roar of the exploding shell. "The Death Rogumer!!! A deadly flying fortress-"  
  
"From the first Uprising!" Finished Kimiko, stopping for a moment. "So what do we do about it? It's heading this way!"  
  
X sized the situation up. Their side: X, with no armor sets, and no special weapons. Kimiko, also with no armor sets (assuming she could have any) and no special weapons. Neither one with any Heart Tanks or Sub Tanks. No backup, no reinforcements. And a sneaking suspicion that Sigma was behind this.  
  
Their opposition: One damned huge airborn gunrack, complete with a full hangar of Bee Bladers and lesser robots. And a basically infinite capacity to create more equally nasty weapons.  
  
"RUN!!" Shouted the blue Hunter, dashing away from the Death Rogumer.  
  
Kimiko gladly complied, a crater forming behind her where another ball of plasma landed.  
  
******  
  
Boron, still at the janitor post, continued his work as though nothing were the matter. Wouldn't do to look suspicious anytime within the next few days, anyways.  
  
******  
  
Ochre slowly began polishing the pane on the front of his Landchaser that covered the nose-cannon. Something about Boron was still bugging him. Then again, he had always felt uneasy around people who talked to themselves.  
  
It was probably just his imagination, he mused, continuing on to the left support strut for the front hoverdisc.  
  
******  
  
They'd been running for five minutes, and already Kimiko's nerves were shot.  
  
She and X constantly had to shift between looking where they were going, and glancing at the Rogumer to keep track of the constant potshots it was taking. She'd managed to run into three 'no parking' signs before she could manage to avoid obstacles while looking backwards, and her cheek still hurt. At least she hadn't suffered a noticable loss of Internal Operations Energy from it, but those cannon shells kept getting closer.  
  
In fact, looking back at it again, she realized to her dismay that the Death Rogumer was also doing so. She altered course to go near X.  
  
"Ecksu-san, it's gaining on us!"  
  
For a moment, X gave no sign of having heard her, glancing back and forth to make sure not to run into anything or get shot.  
  
"Ecksu-san!!"  
  
Kimiko was surprised when X nearly growled. He was usually so calm.  
  
"Fine!" He shouted. "Then we'll have to go in close! Beware of the lasers, they're only good at the middle ranges, and once you get in close, you have to worry about the swarm missiles! And keep your eye out for those Bee Bladers, they're murder at close range!  
  
"Ready?" X called, already charging his buster.  
  
Kimiko nodded.  
  
"ABOUT FACE!!"  
  
Mid-dash, Kimiko was forced to spend the rest of the burst using her jets to slow down. X, meanwhile, hopped up and rebounded off of a lamppost, pulling a long dash-jump towards the airborne juggernaught.  
  
Automatically, Kimiko began jinking her course as she started her charge, dodging various shells and plasma bursts. Before she knew it, she had passed through the distance the lasers could fire at, and the Rogumer was looming large overhead.  
  
Then the carnage really began.  
  
Following X, Kimiko nearly got herself sliced in half by a burst of chaingun fire. As it was, three bullets had found a new home in her abdomen, cutting her Internal Operations Energy by a neat six percent. She managed to land on her feet, enabling her to jump to one side and avoid the concerted plasma cannon fire. Desperately, she scrambled for her balance, narrowly avoiding a rough landing on her head. Forced to jump back by another spatter of bullets on pavement, she took the opportunity to release her supershot and follow it up with a random spray of rapid light shot.  
  
******  
  
X was already on the Death Rogumer, wall-jumping and dash-jumping all about, taking every possible opportunity to slag a weapon or six. There had been a few narrow misses from the short range plasma cannon, but on the whole he was dishing out a lot and taking none. Of course, the Rogumer could take quite a lot. Even with the melted remains of numerous weapons dotting it's hull, the huge ship had weaponry and to spare.  
  
The hissing sound of doors opening was all the warning he got before a huge rack of missiles popped out of a now-missing section of the hull. Reflexively, X jumped back, unleashing a flurry of plasma into the front of the rack, and was rewarded with a rather nicely-hued fireball. A few stray missiles triggered and spiraled off into the distance, lacking targets.  
  
There was a distinctive whoosh of missiles launching, and X increased the pace, no longer taking the opportunity to slag anymore weapons. The twenty or so small missiles following him weren't so careful, and a few miniguns bit the dust. It took X a couple of minutes to loop around and destroy the second launcher in the area, but at least by then the remaining missiles had either run into obstacles or out of fuel. He took an instant to wonder how Kimiko was doing before letting fly at another cluster of plasma cannon.  
  
******  
  
Kimiko had basically been alive for not much more than a week now. There had been quite a few moments during that time at which she had sworn she would never hate anything.  
  
She hated the Death Rogumer quite powerfully.  
  
Every time she managed to destroy a weapon on it, the shots tracking her got a little bit closer.  
  
The previous bullet wounds had already been sealed and were almost repaired, although there were still holes in her purple bodysuit, which had been stained darker with her blood. Even so, the pain remained, and she had no desire to repeat the experience. She had to concentrate. She had to keep from making a pattern with her motions, so that she would not get shot.  
  
She had to figure out which curse was most appropriate for suddenly finding yourself between a Rogumer, two squadrons of swarm missiles, and a Bee Blader.  
  
******  
  
Zero was getting impatient. X was three minutes late. How was he supposed to keep track of Kimiko for a while if she wasn't anywhere nearby?  
  
Grumbling, the red reploid set off for the simulators. Maybe it was taking longer than expected. He knew she hadn't seemed like much of a fighter.  
  
******  
  
Boron hummed as he directed a cleaning robot in one of the quarters. Wouldn't do to have any of that filthy human dust floating around where there weren't any humans. His fingers danced lightly over the controls.  
  
******  
  
Immediately, Kimiko began running between the Bee Blader and the Death Rogumer, the opposite direction from the clusters of missiles. The Rogumer's plasma cannon and chainguns tracked her, still missing, and the Bee Blader turned as well, trying to catch it's targeting systems to her location.  
  
She was still ahead of the shot.  
  
The plasma cannon and miniguns raked the side and front of the Bee Blader as it turned, and then a freak shot detonated the gunship's missiles as they emerged from the launch tubes. The Bee Blader's chaingun shots slammed into several of the cannon on the Rogumer. Into the carnage of small explosions and bullets flew the hail of missiles, many of them becoming confused by what was effectively a heavy spray of flak, and either getting caught or tracking each other. With an immensely lucky dash jump, Kimiko managed to fly out in front of the roiling fireball that became of the insectoid helicopter, narrowly missed by a few pieces of shrapnel. Glancing about mid-jump Kimiko caught sight of one of the missile racks, smoothly rotating to face her.  
  
Shifting midair, she came down facing the launcher, and leapt into another dash jump, finally going up the side of the airship itself, over the few missiles that survived the barrage, landing right next to the missile rack. Running on the curved surface of the hull, she followed the rotation of the Swarm launcher, always staying behind the massive box, hoping that the guns tracking her would do the job for her, allowing her to keep her concentration on not getting shot.  
  
******  
  
X took a moment to calm down a bit as he scanned the area of the front hull he was clinging to. None of the arsenal of weapons in the area were still functional, and he'd taken out the Bee Blader that had shown up to take him on. He hadn't gone unscathed himself, he'd taken a few shots from plasma cannon before he could finish up. The damage was relatively minor, however, and already fixed. Jumping up to a flat area, he started running around the curve of the air fortress towards where he expected Kimiko to be.  
  
He was not disappointed. As he neared Kimiko's position, sounds of a firefight began reaching his ears. Glancing at a few of the destroyed weapons dotting the hull of the Rogumer, he noted a gradual increase in accuracy in the direction he was heading. Rounding one last curve, he reached the far edge of the massive airship just in time to witness the third and fourth Bee Bladers going up in a massive fireball.  
  
There was no time for thought, however, as he spotted Kimiko, thrown backwards by the explosion, heading out an arc that would take her well away from the Rogumer, with a stunned expression that indicated she wouldn't be landing on her feet.  
  
******  
  
Things had not been going well. First the other guns had totally failed to destroy the missile rack Kimiko had been hiding behind. Then, to make it worse, a pair of Bee Bladers had shown up and started firing at oblique angles to try and hit Kimiko without risking the launcher. Forced out of hiding, she had begun running a widening spiral around the missile launcher, blasting away chaingun and plasma cannon at every opportunity.  
  
She had discovered the other missile rack when one of the missiles managed to clip the back of her helmet. Quickly altering tactics, she had paused for a moment directly between the missile racks. The last chaingun had almost tagged her, but she melted the barrel with a snap shot, and, as the missiles neared, had jumped almost straight up. Almost, but not quite. Arcing away from the following horde of missiles, she had kept up the dodging, while the two racks continued to add to the explosive army following her.  
  
One rack had gone down when she'd triggered the warheads on one volley as it was being launched, the steel box blown wide open. That had left her with the two Bee Bladers and the last rack. Spiraling in this time, she managed to draw in the Bee Bladers, which were holding their fire, while closing on the swarm rack.  
  
In retrospect, perhaps ducking behind the missile rack hadn't been the best idea. The sheer number of missiles following her had more than ensured the destruction of the missile launcher, and, as she'd hoped, had managed to get the attack helicopters as well. That was good. They had also had more power than she'd expected, and that was bad. The heavy impact on her back had been followed by a sense of weightlessness, but the explosion had knocked her optics and internal sense of balance completely offline, not to mention completely stunning her.  
  
Thus, it was with a sense of futile dread and panic that she fell limply towards the unhappily distant ground. Her rather graceless flight was interrupted by a slight impact, and the feeling of weightlessnes returned again.  
  
Odd. I thought that would hurt more. And I didn't think I'd bounce. it wasn't that high.  
  
Her vision cleared, to reveal a profile view of X.  
  
Huh?  
  
******  
  
Still holding Kimiko in the cradled position, X landed in a crouch, then straightened up and placed Kimiko on her feet. It took the green prereploid a moment to catch her balance, then she turned to X.  
  
"Arigatoo, Ecksu-san."  
  
X waved it off. "No need. I really don't think I can let either of us get hurt any more than absolutely necessary, particularly by minor mistakes. I have this really bad feeling that this whole thing is just the beginning."  
  
There was a grating laugh from the direction of the Rogumer, and both X and Kimiko whirled, to find a most unpleasent sight.  
  
A well-known purple helmet with a T-shaped visor peered out of the cockpit of an equally well-known blue-and-yellow combat mecha. A single, malevolent red eye glowed from within the visor.  
  
"Indeed, it is." Vile grated out. "Indeed it is."  
  
Big uh-oh. REALLY big uh-oh.  
  
Remember, when X didn't have any armor or special weapons or anything, Vile totally creamed him with that particular Ride Armor. And none of X's shot did any damage.  
  
Not to mention that neither X nor Kimiko is at 100 % (particularly not Kimiko).  
  
And what about Zero, Ochre, and Boron?  
  
And will Stamp, Turk, Arnie or Turtlava ever show their faces again?  
  
Would you believe I'm not sure?  
  
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" "Okay, but what about me? I bet he doesn't know what lurks in the hearts of women!" 


	10. Precursor to Panic

X stared up at the far-too-familiar visage (or lack thereof) that was gazing malevolently down at him.  
  
"Vile." He stated calmly. "I should have expected as much."  
  
"Hah!" Exclaimed the psychotic reploid, his baleful crimson orb never budging from the face of his hated enemy. "What did you expect, you pathetic pacifist! You come charging after us and expect not to find us? How ridiculous."  
  
Kimiko glanced warily between the two. The tension that was building up was something that she didn't think was very good.  
  
I see. Thought the blue prototype. It really is a corrupted version of the normal training files. This isn't going to be easy- I hope I can keep Kimiko from being hurt too badly.  
  
Indeed, X remembered all too well that both of the times he had fought Vile in his ride armor during the first Uprising had resulted in an easy win for the purple Bobba-Fett look-alike. However hard it would be for him, his unwitting companion on this little trip into danger would find it an order of magnitude harder with her lack of training.  
  
Carefully, remembering the rules she had learned, both from X and from the datafiles in the MHHQ, Kimiko began to charge up her buster.  
  
Vile chuckled at the slowly rising whine of the green prereploid's weapon. "Sounds like your little friend there is eager to get things started, X. Who is she, by the way? I don't recall any hunters looking like her."  
  
Kimiko began to sweat, cursing herself for a fool. She had, in her moment of nervousness, neglected to recall that busters make a sound when being charged.  
  
X narrowed his eyes slightly. "Kimiko, stand down. This is my fight- I doubt you can do this yet."  
  
Somewhat reluctantly, Kimiko released the charge, the plasma in her buster dissipating harmlessly into the air as she stepped back, giving the purple demon in ride-armor quite some distance.  
  
Vile chuckled again. "Good to see she has some sense." He grated. "Too bad I can't say the same for you! Do you really think you can take on my Ride Armor, you rattling old prototype?"  
  
X readied his buster, starting the charge. "Actually, I don't know. But I guess we're going to find out, regardless, aren't we?"  
  
Vile gave the impression of grinning evilly, which was an impressive feat given his only discernible feature was a glowing red eye. "Oh, you are soooo right, X.."  
  
******  
  
Zero tried the combination again.  
  
Error. Authorization code not recognized. Please try again.  
  
One of his eyes twitched as he glared at the monitor.  
  
Taptaptaptaptap.  
  
Error. Authorization code not recognized. Please try again.  
  
"Alright, that does it."  
  
The Crimson Hunter turned on his helmet comm. "Sylvia, are you there?"  
  
"Yes, Zero?" Replied the intra-base communications officer, one of the human staff members.  
  
"Can you patch me through to the techs? I think something's wrong with the simulations suite."  
  
"Urgent?"  
  
"I believe so." Answered Zero.  
  
"Right. Patching you through to Turk."  
  
******  
  
The semi-holographic Vile glared coldly at X.  
  
The New Blue Bomber looked calmly back.  
  
Kimiko, meanwhile, was staring at the severed arms of the Chimera ride armor, which were lying on the ground between the two combatants.  
  
"Lucky idiot." Rasped Vile.  
  
"No," said X, "I just happen to know the weakness of the Chimera. Now then, I suppose we should end this?"  
  
"HA! This is far from over, blueberry!" Crowed Vile, jumping the Ride Armor up onto the lift being lowered from the Death Rogumer. "You haven't seen the last of me.."  
  
Kimiko walked over to one of the severed arms.  
  
X glanced around. "Now, let's see. This should be over in about thirty seconds."  
  
The green prereploid examined the severed shoulder joint on the arm. The accuracy impressed her even more up close- a precise half-circle burn mark ran out from the edge of the metal towards the arm.  
  
Suddenly, the world shifted.  
  
******  
  
Turk looked up from the exposed circuit board at the impatient Zero.  
  
"Could you, perhaps, please stop that?"  
  
Zero stopped pacing, looking over at the crouched ceratopsian reploid. "Hn?" He grunted.  
  
"Pacing." Said Turk, returning his eyes to his point of focus. "Makes it hard to concentrate. Ah! There we go. That should do it. Give the manual a try."  
  
Zero gripped the handles on the sliding doors firmly, and pushed outwards to open the door.  
  
Then he pushed harder.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
The crimson hunter turned and gave the green-armored techie a questioning look.  
  
Frowning, Turk pulled a large datapad from his belt, one that was rather thicker than normal. Sticking it to the wall, he carefully pressed a few buttons before removing one of his fine-manipulator extensions. "Let's see what. What on earth???"  
  
Zero walked over. "What is it?"  
  
Turk tapped the screen on the techpad. "There's some sort of electromagnetical field holding the doors shut. From inside."  
  
"Meaning?"  
  
"The simulation system's generating it. This isn't going to be easy. The system shuts off when the door is opened. But to open the door, we need to shut off the system."  
  
".."  
  
"Patience, Zero, patience. This system can't do anything that X can't handle. Though I'm not so sure about the lady."  
  
******  
  
X blinked. "Then again, I could be wrong."  
  
Kimiko parroted her mentor, looking about. "Ecksu-san, what's going on?"  
  
X shook his head. "I'm not sure. It seems like this thing just slid us to another simulation instead of terminating. This is more than a simple trap. I think we're dealing with a mole here."  
  
The green-armored prereploid glanced around a bit as she approached X. "Mole? From whom?"  
  
X shrugged. "You've got me. Looks like the only way out of this is through, though. This looks like the docks- the ones Launch Octopus took over."  
  
With a thrashing of limbs, something swam by at high speed, kicking up a spray that soaked both of the prototypes standing on the dock.  
  
X wiped off his face. "Speak of the devil." He tracked the wake as it headed off into the water a distance before stopping, the large, bulbous orange head sinking beneath the water.  
  
"Looks like it's a trip to waterworld for us. Are you equipped for underwater?"  
  
Am I equipped for underwater operations?  
  
This unit is equipped for operations underwater to a depth of two hundred meters. All seams automatically seal once immersion exceeds five percent.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Good, then. Let's go, and be careful- there may be an ambush."  
  
******  
  
X leaned against an underwater support to the platform above, banging his head against it. He could practically hear Zero, as though his old friend had been accompanying him.  
  
"There MAY be an ambush." Zero would have said mockingly. "You just had to say it, didn't you?"  
  
X wasn't sure about Murphy himself, but he sometimes got the idea that Murphy's Law was after him.  
  
"Ecksu-san?" Kimiko asked via the helmet-comm, fingering the nasty dent in her right shoulder-pad. "Are you sure you should be doing that?"  
  
X shook his head, stood up straight, and peered into the water ahead, over the many pieces of Gulpfer that littered the shallows. "No, but I really, really needed to."  
  
Kimiko blinked. "I.. see." The charging Gulpfer had caught them both by surprise, though again, she had come out worse for it than X. He had managed to get out of it with a couple scratches- she estimated that at worst, his IOE had dropped all of maybe five percent.  
  
She wasn't so lucky, having caught one fishbot in the gut, and another in the right shoulder. Her IOE had dropped another ten percent, leaving her at fifty-four. She would keep up, though. She was supposed to help X, and she couldn't very well do that if she neither learned from her mistakes nor kept in one piece through this. Following X's gaze, she saw a strange rotating door.  
  
"Ecksu-san, what's that door?"  
  
"Well," X mused, "My guess is that Launch is through that door. We're going to have to fight him."  
  
Kimiko paled slightly. "But, wasn't he recognized as the most competent underwater specialist to ever work in the Hunters?"  
  
X nodded. "And I had to fight and kill him before, on my own, with only a bit more experience than you've got now.. But then, I had some.. 'extras'. Hopefully, there being two of us will make up for that."  
  
Kimiko nodded, not liking this one bit.  
  
******  
  
Zero stared at Turk for a moment, then at the door. Then he looked back to Turk, one hand reaching over his shoulder to rest on the handle of his beam saber.  
  
"How about a more. direct method of entry?"  
  
Turk shook his head. "Not through the door, we can't. The field will keep the pieces of the door in place. Unless we actually melt a hole through it, we're not getting in that way."  
  
Zero's hand shifted to his chin, rubbing speculatively. "Wall next to the door?"  
  
Turk sighed. "Two problems. First, we'd have to rerout everything running through these circuits. Second, that would take quite a while, even if we weren't worried about actual damage to the wall."  
  
Zero grimaced. "Well, let's get started then. I want to get into there as quickly as possible."  
  
**************************************************************************** ********** That's right, I'm NOT dead! And I'm still writing, too!  
  
Anywhich, the plot thickens, and next time, X and Kimiko have to deal with Launch Octopus. Or was that Octopald? Hmmm.. And what about Ochre and Boron? Will Zero and Turk (and whoever else shows up to help) get into the room in time? Or will someone. (gasp) DIE?!?!?!?  
  
Tune in next time, when some of these questions are answered, others aren't, and a few are dismissed outright!  
  
-Selene Starblade 


	11. Dive into water? How about a cannonball...

Standing just in front of the rotating door, X looked seriously at Kimiko. "When I went up against Launch in the first Uprising, I beat him mostly because of the weapons I had gained from fighting the other ex-hunters. We don't have that advantage now, nor do I have my armor set."  
  
Kimiko nodded, rolling her right shoulder again in a final check. Fortunately, the dent in her armor was just that, and wasn't going to impair her arm's mobility.  
  
As he turned back to the door, X spoke again by the sonar/radio. "We're going to have only one advantage to rely on in this one- there are two of us, instead of one. And even that's iffy. Be careful, but don't hold in place."  
  
"Hai, Ecksu-san."  
  
X glanced at her, nodded, and put his hand to the pressure-panel on the door. The lock spun, and the door slid out of the way, revealing a moderately dark corridor within.  
  
Turk nodded at the team of techs- mostly the lighter humanoid reploids, but there were a few humans in the group as well. "One last check."  
  
The human using the diagnostics panel hit a few keys, waited a moment, then nodded. "As long as you don't destroy any of the major power cables or pipes, you can have at. Bit of a waste of material, but then."  
  
Turk shook his head. "We may not have time for that. You have the schematics file?"  
  
The tech pulled a thin, microchip-edged datapad out of a slot on the mobile diagnostics panel. "Right here."  
  
Turk turned to Zero. "Upload that. It'll tell you where not to stick that saber."  
  
Zero nodded, and opened one side of his chest compartment. Carefully, he reached in and pulled out a cable, then took the pad from the tech. He plugged the chip-edge into the cable, and stood there for a moment, motionless. Then he blew out a breath. "Oh, boy. This is going to take some time to figure out. Dammit. There's gotta be something faster we can do...  
  
The two prereploids dropped to the floor of the large, squarish room. Standing opposite them was Launch Octopus. The orange, bulbous reploid snarled at them over the sonar link. "And now you're here to disrupt my salvage operation. Dammit, can't you leave well enough alone, X?"  
  
The six-limbed reploid then blinked with surprise, looking at Kimiko. "What the hell? We got all of the hunters except you and Zero! Where the hell did she come from?"  
  
Kimiko and X both blinked. X smirked slightly, again surprising the maverick reploid. X didn't smirk. Zero smirked sometimes, but X? Never!  
  
"Rumor has it that the storkoid brought her."  
  
Launch glared. "Ha ha, X. That's enough banter out of you." So saying, he waved his tentacles, launching a volley of six homing missiles at the two prototypes.  
  
X, familiar with this tactic, dash-jumped over the missiles, building a charge in his buster, only to notice that Kimiko hadn't followed suit. Glancing back, he saw something very odd.  
  
Kimiko watched the missiles come at her, waiting until. there it was.  
  
With a slight kick off the floor, she dash-jumped in a very shallow arc, passing through the center of the missile formation. As they swerved to follow her, three of them collided, detonating on each other. Even as Kimiko neared their opponent, X was landing and releasing a half-charged green blast of plasma at the Maverick General. Immediately, he dashed to the side, far out of the way, peppering the orange reploid with light shot. He still wasn't sure what Kimiko was going to do about the other three missiles following her.  
  
As she neared Launch, Kimiko let her boot soles slide lightly across the floor, until she was almost in reach of his lashing tentacles. Then, with a sudden burst from her dash boots, the green prereploid pulled a totally vertical dash-jump. As the homing missiles swerved to follow her, ignoring everything but their target, they slid wide, crashing sidelong into Launch, who had been unbalanced by X's barrage. The octopoid slid backwards slightly from the small explosions, while Kimiko tumbled in the water, arcing away from him.  
  
Steadying himself even as X unleashed a heavily-charged blue blast, Launch leapt up into the water, flying to far above and just behind Kimiko. Immediately, he began spinning, generating a column of whirlpool. Try as she might, Kimiko could not escape the drag of the water. X, seeing that their opponent was about to try draining his partner's life, dashed into the bottom of the whirlpool, firing up at the Maverick General.  
  
Incapable of grinning at his good luck due to the lack of a mouth, Launch dropped on X, immediately lashing out with his tentacles to latch onto the blue robot. Just as he got a grip, however, Kimiko, who had reached bottom and jumped again, slammed one foot into the middle of his forehead. The attack did nowhere near as much damage as it could have, since the water slowed all motions, but it was enough to shove him back, straining his grip and popping all but one tentacle free of X's body. Immediately, X whirled as best he could, grabbing the tentacle and wrenching it free before it could do any significant damage.  
  
Tumbling through the water, Launch came to a stop feet from the wall, standing on the floor again. Obviously he would need to engage in some more. complex. maneuvers to fight effectively against the two. As Kimiko had accidentally landed on X's head, her kick having robbed her of the momentum to clear the other reploid, the two were still getting up when Launch fired off a set of four piranha-missiles, vaguely fish-shaped missiles with grinding, clashing saws for warheads. Following up on the attack, he jumped over the two while launching another volley of six homing missiles, then descended straight for the two.  
  
Being on top, Kimiko managed to get up first, and, spying the barrage, she bent down, grabbed X by one arm and threw him forward, perpendicular to the missiles and their firer. Simultaneously, she dashed backwards, hoping that splitting up would allow them to dodge the weaponry. As she slammed into the wall backwards, she reflected muddily that perhaps she should have paid more attention to where, exactly, in the room they were.  
  
The four piranha-missiles plowed onwards, straight ahead, and impacted the far wall of the room, quickly grinding to a halt. Four of the homing missiles followed Kimiko, while the other two headed for the further-off and tumbling X. As he flew through the water, the blue prototype spun, righting himself, and launched another barrage of light shots where he had come from. Two impacted the homing missiles following him, detonating them, while the rest continued their collision course with the maverick himself. Kimiko, dazed though she was, released the charge she had been building, in line with the rule 'Always keep your buster charging'. The large blue fireball roiled forth, consuming the homing missiles without even slowing down.  
  
Launch Octopus' eyes had just enough time to widen as he landed before he took the shots, a cluster of at least six light shot on one side, and one massive charged shot on the other. Without any sort of preamble, both of the ammunition bins for his homing missiles detonated, ripping his body apart.  
  
Kimiko blinked at the scraps of metal in the middle of the room as she shook off the slight stunning effect from impacting the wall. X ran right across them, slowing to a stop as he neared her.  
  
"Are you alright?"  
  
Kimiko nodded. "Hai."  
  
"Good. What's your Internal Ops Energy at now?"  
  
Kimiko did a quick check. "Fifty-two. I did not take much damage."  
  
X nodded. "You're doing a much better job on the teamwork already. Although you could try not landing on me."  
  
"Sorry, Ecksu-san."  
  
"It's alright."  
  
Zero nodded, stood up, and then walked up to the chosen section of wall. "Ready to clear debris?"  
  
The reploids nearby all nodded. A short distance beyond them, Stamp Apatasaurus and another large reploid known only as Atlas stood in the hallway off to either side, basically blocking it off from general foot traffic. Cain stood next to Stamp, watching worriedly.  
  
Focusing on the planned series of strikes, Zero reached over his shoulder, gripped his Z-saber, and-  
  
Shiiiiing-skak-slik-slik-shunk-slak-slak-swish-zaark  
  
A number of pieces of wall fell to the floor, the armor plate melted in specific patterns. Moments later, pieces of some circuits and a few particular pipes fell to the floor. One large pipe that ran just below the surface of the wall in the area remained, at slightly above head height for the red hunter. He stepped back, already preparing the next set of saber swings even as the group of techs cleared out the debris.  
  
Four hundred and twenty-seven blows left.  
  
This would take a bit of time.  
  
X and Kimiko both looked around in surprise. They were standing on one side of a rather large gorge, right next to another door with a rotating lock.  
  
"I do not understand." Said Kimiko, giving the door a confused glance. "This is breaking the pattern."  
  
X nodded. "I think that's intentional. Whoever did this wants us kept off balance, to make it harder to concentrate." He looked back to the door from gazing at the ledge on the other side of the gorge. "Unless I miss my guess, though, Armored Armadillo should be in this room."  
  
Kimiko nodded. X was right- they needed to get through this first, worry about the intention behind it when the danger was over. "I did some reasearch on him. This should not be too difficult, so long as we can keep our timing up.  
  
X nodded. "Shall we?"  
  
Kimiko, closer to the door than X, turned and pressed the panel, causing it to open.  
  
Ochre stepped out of the landchaser garage, and almost ran into a group of recruits heading down the hall, instructor in tow.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
The instructor turned to him. "Some sort of emergency with the simul rooms- noone's being allowed to use them."  
  
Ochre blinked. "Hm. Excuse me."  
  
He headed off towards the janitorial post.  
  
The instructor blinked, shrugged, and turned to his class. "Hey! Let's keep moving here. Those texts won't download themselves!"  
  
There was a groan, but the class continued its walk down the hallway.  
  
Kimiko stood with X, both of them posessing a full charge in their buster. Opposite them stood the purple-and-orange reploid known as Armored Armadillo.  
  
The Maverick General had come crashing down through the ceiling in a spinning ball, bounced once, and uncurled to get a good look at his adversaries. For an instant there had been silence.  
  
Just as X was about to make a comment, his opponent launched into a wildly ricocheting spin, flying about the room.  
  
Just like outside. X thought. Not quite like it ought to be.  
  
X and Kimiko continued to fling themselves aside each time the crazed reploid bounced too near. Gradually a pattern in the maverick's movements began to develop.  
  
X frowned. When he had fought Armored on his own, the ex-hunter had taken time to stop spinning and shoot at X with his head cannon, but the rodent was engaging in no such activity now.  
  
Kimiko was noticing something else. As she kept her eyes on the caroming reploid to avoid being hit, she saw that every time Armored bounced off of the door that had led into the room, it bent slightly, before rebounding to its original shape.  
  
As she leaped the whirling ball of death the maverick had made of himself, she shouted at X.  
  
"Ecksu-san! Look at the door!"  
  
X, puzzled, nearly allowed himself to be hit by the berserk attack as he glanced at the door. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about it.  
  
Then, as he watched, Armored bounced off of the door again, and it gave slightly with the impact before resuming it's normal shape.  
  
Turning to track Armored Armadillo's wild motions, he managed to call back to Kimiko, "You have an idea?"  
  
Neatly sidestepping another rock-shattering impact by Armored, she shrugged. "I thought maybe you might get one. It's a starting point at least, right?"  
  
X nodded, then dashed to one side, ignoring the gravel kicked up by Armored's impact on the floor.  
  
Kimiko tracked Armored, carefully checking her timing, then, at just the right moment, let of a batch of three light shot.  
  
To her dismay, they bounced right off of the wildly spinning maverick, one of them narrowly missing her head.  
  
Then, X had it.  
  
"Shoot the door!"  
  
Kimiko blinked, then saw what X was getting at. The gorge. Even the armadillo reploid couldn't possibly be tough enough to withstand that much of a fall, could he?  
  
Building their buster charges, both the hunter and the trainee kept up their dodging.  
  
In position, X let loose a blast that melted part of the door's surface. Quickly dodging out of the way, he watched as Armored's next impact left a sizeable dent in the metal. As he had the time, he sprayed the door with a volley of light shot, damaging it further, before jumping out of the way of Armored's next pass. This time, there was a high-pitched screech from the bending metal.  
  
Then, something totally unprecedented happened. Armored dropped out of his roll right above X, grabbed him, clutched him close, and then began to roll again.  
  
The extra mass slowed the rodent down, but not enough to make him easily shootable, particularly not with the blue hunter generally in the way.  
  
"HA!" Screamed out the maverick, the first time he had even spoken in the battle. "TRY AND HIT ME NOW!"  
  
"Ecksu-san!" Shouted Kimiko, dodging another near miss.  
  
Armored was moving too swiftly to control his motion much, and so X was only occasionally striking the wall, ceiling, or floor, and then usually with an arm or a foot. As such, X did not feel himself to be in too much danger, so long as this did not continue for too long.  
  
"I'm alright!" He yelled back, "Shoot the door anyways!"  
  
"WHAT?!?!?!?"  
  
"Shoot the door anyways! I'll be fine! Trust me!"  
  
Armored blinked, but didn't come out of his roll. "The door?"  
  
Simultaneously, Kimiko, hoping she was doing the right thing, let loose her shot at the door. Then the maverick and hunter hit it.  
  
The metal completely broke, a hole ripped cleanly through it. The ball of reploid and robot slammed down the tiny tunnel, gaining velocity as it went. The outer door, not meant to withstand such punishment easily blew out as the two caromed into midair in the gorge.  
  
Kimiko overrode the safeties on her dash boots, practically flying down the hallway to the edge of the ledge, where she just barely managed to stop before falling off herself. She stared down into the canyon, as an indistinct shape bounced off the far side, much further down than she was.  
  
She paled as it disappeared into the bottom of the gulch, followed by the sound of something heavy and metallic being utterly destroyed with an incredible impact.  
  
"Ecksu."  
  
Oops. Um, this could be a problem.  
  
Maybe Zero will get there before it gets too bad?  
  
Gee, and up till now, Kimiko was the one having a rough time of it.  
  
Isn't it wonderful? This is only the. what, the third cliffhanger chapter ending I've ever made? I don't think there were any others in this fic, either.  
  
Anywhom, join in next time, as the simul continues, and suspicions begin to be raised about the mole.. 


	12. Determination

Kimiko stared down into the gorge. This was all wrong.  
  
X-san was one of the two greatest Hunters ever. To lose out to a simulation of someone he'd defeated before.  
  
Were she human, Kimiko would likely have been occupied being sick. A fall of that distance, even to a Reploid, was nowhere near anything to be sneered at.  
  
Suddenly, the world went blank.  
  
When things cleared up, Kimiko found herself in a desert. Sand slowly swirled about, and nearby was the entrance to a very familiar underground complex.  
  
She shuddered. X-san was. gone? Dead?  
  
She sincerely hoped not. She wished it not to be, with all her soul. It was not right for someone who'd stopped four Maverick Uprisings to lose out to a. a computer glitch! Outrage filled every fiber of her being as she stood upon the warehouse. Her father had told her to aid X in his fight to help the humans. If he was dead, then she had failed..  
  
This would not be tolerated. Her father would not have, and neither would she.  
  
And so, Kimiko ran. This place was already familiar to her, thanks to her training earlier with X. This time, though, she paid the scrivers, helidrones, and corridor-blockers no heed other than to move around them. No snags in her motion, she ran, too fast for the robots to keep up with.  
  
As she reached the empty elevator shaft, a reflexive shot upwards, without even looking, took out the hovering robot, even as it reached out to grab the walls.  
  
Still not using her dash jets, waiting for them to finish recharging enough from her short flight earler, she scrambled up the wall, using her gauntlet- claws to maintain purchase, moving too quickly to backslide any. A curious mixture of fury and despair warped her face as she crested the edge of the elevator shaft, and ran down the hall, heedless of the gigantic parts racked on the walls to either side.  
  
A scriver was unlucky enough to hop up at her during this last stretch of hall, and met first with her left fist, and then with the wall, tumbling to the ground with a clatter, finally being terminated with the bang of a gigantic foot falling on it.  
  
Kimiko reached the downwards stretch leading to the lair of the gigantic purple robot, and simply fell down it, not bothering to build a charge in her buster. With a crash of metal, her booted feet landed on the topmost girder, and she stood stock still.  
  
The instant the mechaniroid landed before her, she sprang into action. Leaping forwards, she ran across its shoulder onto its head. Predictably, it responded by swinging its morning-star fist at her.  
  
Kimiko's eyes widened as she rapidly dodged, using a small burst from her dash boots to land on the opposite wall from where the robot was facing. The spiked ball slid through the air just over the Mechaniroid's head, swinging down to rest at its side once more. It hadn't smashed its own skull!  
  
To Kimiko's dismay, the gigantic robot, rather than turning around, simply span its head to face her. She watched its arms, careful for its next attack. Even as she did, she began building a charge in her buster. Obviously, there was something she was missing here. There was a way to defeat this thing, of that she was sure. But if it wasn't by forcing it to destroy itself, then there had to be some way she could have an effect on the metallic behemoth.  
  
But what was it?  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Zero tapped his foot, metal clashing on metal.  
  
"Well? Can I go back in yet?"  
  
The last of the Hunters set to removing the destroyed pieces of metal clambered out from the good-sized hole in the wall.  
  
"Go for it, sir!"  
  
A short, abrupt nod, and Zero dashed forwards, between the few still- evident pipes and circuits within the wall.  
  
As the sound of metallic mayhem ensued from within the wall, Stamp arched his neck over, bringing his head down near Turk.  
  
"Wow. I've never seen Commander Zero like that before."  
  
Turk chuckled. "You've never seen him in combat, then?"  
  
Stamp blinked, then thought a moment.  
  
"Actually, no. This is how he acts in the field?"  
  
"Worse, really. He's holding back a lot, because he's trying to keep from breaking the wrong thing."  
  
There was a metallic clang, followed by cursing from within the confines of the thick wall.  
  
"Where the hell is the cleanup, huh?!? Get this shit out from under my feet!"  
  
Several of the techs backed away from the hole a bit, while a few of the Hunters just shook their heads and moved in.  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Kimiko clung desparately to the underside of a set of girders. She'd managed to temporarily lose the attention of the huge purple robot, and sincerely hoped it would stay lost long enough for her to get some thinking in.  
  
Shots to the arms weren't working. Shots to the legs weren't working. Nor to the body, the feet, the 'hands', the joints- and her shots at its head were blocked when it interposed one huge weapon in front of itself. Obviously, the head was the weak point, and she'd have to fire when it couldn't defend its head- but with both spiked 'fists' in motion near- constantly, that wasn't likely to ever happen. Maybe if she-  
  
Kimiko's train of thought was derailed as one of the massive weapons crashed into the topside of the girder she was hanging from, flinging her down into the steely platform below. The shock jolted the connections in all of her systems, leaving her momentarily stunned. She watched dazedly for a moment as one wrecking-ball swung down at her. This was it- she was going to.. No. She wasn't.  
  
A full-power blast from her Dash Boots, and she was spiraling through the air, twisting to land on her feet on the next girder, even as one of the mechaniloid's weapons utterly ruined the platform she had occupied only instants before.  
  
Almost before she had landed, she was starting into another jump, back in the direction she had come from, and rebounded off the side of the upper platform, using that as a rebound point to make her way up the structures, until she was even with the robot's head.  
  
The mechaniloid ripped its limb free from the platform, swinging it through several others, bringing its other weapon around as well, as if to clap Kimiko between the spiked orbs.  
  
This was her chance.  
  
Leaping forwards off the platform, Kimiko arced up, over, and down, heading straight for the mechaniloid's face. As she approached, heading somewhat downwards, she engaged in an inadvisable use of basic dash-jets.  
  
She used them to accelerate midair, but not up or to the sides. Instead she simply increased her velocity in the direction she had already been going. With a wrenching crack, she swung her arm out, literally shoving her fist into the center of the mechaniloid's face, the softer steel- titanium alloy of the robot's head giving far more easily than the rest of its titanitefloalloy construction would.  
  
Leaving her arm in place, Kimiko shifted her hand into a buster, and ripped loose shot after shot into the robot's skull. Within seconds, the entire contents of the robot's head were a charred, melted ruin, and, unbalanced, it began to fall.  
  
With a kiai of effort, Kimiko wrenched her arm free, and jumped clear.  
  
And then both of the robot's arms swung past her, clipping her helmet, creating a large dent in the side.  
  
The prereploid spun out of control, falling into the darkness of the huge room.  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Ocher grumbled as he worked at the terminal, scanning the access logs. It had to be in here somewhere.  
  
File after file, the text flowed up the screen, some items tagged, some not.  
  
Ocher reflected that it was somewhat ironic that it was someone purely useful in combat duty who would be the only one to think of checking the access logs. Then again, X was very important to the Maverick Hunters, and it only made sense that he would be the first concern.  
  
Either way, he absolutely hated scanning through all these times and dates.  
  
Finally, one caught his attention.  
  
21XX, 15th August, 2:57 PM Maintenance Station Halbert File Upload Completed 14.74GQ  
  
"Today.." Ocher muttered to himself. "Halbert. Halbert.. Wait, I was just there. Only Boron and I have been in there since last night.."  
  
Ochers expression darkened considerably as he uploaded the information to a small datapad, and sent it by chute to Dr. Cain. It didn't matter where in the building the man was, the computer would find him.  
  
Then he stalked off down the hall. He had to have a little. talk. with a certain sanitation engineer..  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Kimiko blinked twice, not quite registering the sight before- or, rather, above- her.  
  
X, landing, having caught Kimiko yet again, looked down at her and smiled slightly. "You've got to stop dropping in unexpectedly like that."  
  
The logical side of Kimiko's mind went 'Guh' as it completely failed to process the presence of a person who was, by all rights, totally destroyed. The rest of her was in a similar state of confusion, so, even as the pieces of Mechaniloid fell about them, she only managed to babble a little.  
  
"Wha. a.. E-ecksu-san.. The. canyon. falling. nani?"  
  
"Good to see you too."  
  
As X put her down, Kimiko found that having her feet on firm ground seemed to help her ability to process what was going on.  
  
"What. How did you survive that, Ecksu-san? The fall."  
  
X nodded, smiling slightly. "Would have killed me outright if I had fallen all that way. The thing about a canyon, of course, is that it has two sides. I was able to shove off from Armored when he started flailing in panic. I slammed into the far wall of the canyon, but was fortunate enough- or unfortunate enough- to run into an outcropping. Gave me a bit of a gash."  
  
Indeed, there was a small tear across the belly of X's bodysuit, but the synthskin had already almost completely sealed up over the wound. Kimiko nodded, glad that her friend had managed to come through it alright. "Why didn't you shout to me, Ecksu-san?"  
  
X chuckled slightly. "You rushed off too fast. I- whoops."  
  
And the world TWISTED.  
  
Looking up, Kimiko saw that she and X were standing amidst a few crates, next to a huge warehouse. Off in the distance, tiny flying robots flitted about, and more warehouses could be seen, in steady, even rows. The entire scenery was in the dull greys of steel, titanium, and ferroconcrete. Kimiko blinked a bit.  
  
"Ecksu-san, where are we now?"  
  
X frowned, looking around the area. This place was familiar- and very unwelcome. "This looks like the warehouse district from Dopplertown- circa the Third Uprising. It also looks like we've got a small breather- How are you holding up?"  
  
Kimiko shook her head. "Not well, Ecksu-san. I'm down to forty-five percent. You?"  
  
X frowned. "I'm at eighty-six. This isn't good. You've been averaging fourteen percent down each instance we go through- And they're only getting harder. Maybe-"  
  
"Iie, Ecksu-san." Stated Kimiko. "I can keep going. It's getting easier." X gave her a sidelong glance.  
  
"If you're sure. I just don't want to risk anyone dying in here- If you get in serious danger, you'll have to let me take over. You understand that?"  
  
With a faintly sour look on her face, Kimiko nodded. "Hai. I would rather not be a burden, though."  
  
"Understood. Now, this is going to be fairly easy at first." X turned, and gazed at the warehouses. "But if we have to fight who I think we do at the end of this, it's going to be extremely difficult. You've read the files on Blasé Horneck?"  
  
Kimiko paled slightly. "Yes.. The simulator for him gauges him at A-level difficulty and up- noone with a lower grade is even allowed to be in a training sim involving that Maverick."  
  
X nodded once, shortly. "That's why I was worried. You've been doing exceptionally well for someone completely untrained, but this may well be a good bit over your head."  
  
Kimiko sighed, looking down somewhat. "I am aware of that, Ecksu-san. Still."  
  
X chuckled grimly. "Very determined. That can be a good thing. C'mon, let's move it before they start coming out to look for us."  
  
"Hai."  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
And there's part 11. Took me longer than any of the others, because life has taken to kicking me in the head of late. Dammit.  
  
Anyways, there you all go, and here I go, of to continue writing. By all means, review! Ja ne!  
  
-Selene Starblade, 11/16/03 


	13. Rebound

Quietly, Ocher stepped into the maintenance station. The only sound to be heard was the dull hum of electronics, monitoring each other and themselves. Slowly, he moved forwards to the high-backed chair set into the three-quarters ring of control panels. Reaching out with one hand, he grabbed the side of the back, and spun it halfway around.

There was nobody in the chair.

"Aw, shiiiit...." Ocher groaned, then switched on his helmet comm. There was no time to be discreet about this now- this needed to be dealt with immediately, or sooner.

"Attention, all personnel of Maverick Hunter Headquarters! This is Captain Ocher, putting out an all-points bulletin. The staff member known as Boron is hereby requested to report to Unit 04 Command Quarters and remain there until further notice. Furthermore, if staff member Boron is seen, he is to be escorted to said Quarters immediately, regardless of other possible obligations or needs. Boron is a needed possible witness regarding tampering with the Simulator systems. Thank you for your attention."

Triggering a five-minute repeat cycle, Ocher immediately turned to one of the panels, and began typing. He had work to do.

**SMASH REND TEAR MELT BEND FOLD BREAK SNAP CLANG CLANG CRUNCH**

"CLEANUP!!!"

Having established something of a rhythm, the three crews of technicians immediately set to work, practically diving into the wall to clear the debris. Zero was nearing halfway through the wall, which was the sticky point. The route through the wall would have to make a small semi-circle to route around a power main, and there was no way to divert the current to anywhere else- no other power lines close by could handle that much electricity.

Cain, looking on from the other side of the hall, sighed as he leaned on his staff. "X... I know you should be alright, but please, Kimiko, don't put yourself at risk..."

It was, perhaps, a silly thought, he knew. Still, he would never like the fact that sometimes Maverick Hunters died, and there was little to nothing he could do about it. It wasn't that Kimiko was special... or maybe it was. A part of him was determined to figure out where she came from, and how, but if she was dead....

At this point, the vacuum tube about four meters down the hall rang out a small chime, and a datapad clunked into the exit bin. Blinking himself out of his reverie, Cain walked over to the chute, and pulled out the pad. Still leaning on his staff, he turned it on one-handed, and began to read.

"Attention, all personnel of Maverick Hunter Headquarters!" Declared the loudspeakers, in Ocher's voice. "This is Captain Ocher, putting out an all-points bulletin..."

X nodded grimly to himself as Kimiko kneeled on the floor before the rotary door, gathering herself. She had, indeed, been improving. Between the two of them, they had plowed through Blasé's hordes of guard robots like a stream of water through cotton candy. The green prereploid hadn't even taken any hits this time through.

Though, he mused, that might change when they went to deal with the opponent who awaited them on the other side of the door. Of course, there was really only one way to find out...

Heaving a heavy sigh, X strode through the rotary-lock door, ignoring the slightly puzzled look Kimiko gave his back as she followed. Time to focus- without access to the weaponry of Gravity Beetle, or even of any other Maverick General, this would be a very difficult fight.

As the door closed behind her, Kimiko regarded the room, indigo eyes scanning all corners. He had to be here somewhere, now which- aha.

With an angry buzzing sound, the menacing form of Blasé Horneck descended slowly partway from the farthest ceiling corner of the blank, cubical room. X's determined gaze was met by an angry glare from the Maverick, and there was a heavy silence for a moment.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, X leaped up and back, latching onto the wall with the climbing claws on his arm. It took Kimiko an instant to register the hornet Maverick charging at her, stinger-first. Almost an instant too long, as she dived forwards to the floor, rolling as she moved to see him pass over her, close enough for the wind from his slender wings to irritate her eyes. Irritation or not, she loosed her charged buster shot at him as he passed overhead, then fired her dash jets.

Jinking slightly, Blasé managed to avoid taking the full brunt of the shot, and missed Kimiko on the back-pass by virtue of her improvised dodge. Turning to focus on her, the airborne menace received a second full-charge shot, this one actually stronger than the previous one by virtue of X's modified Buster, proving that it really wouldn't pay to ignore either of his opponents. Spinning about, the irritated insect launched a spray of wasp bombs at X, who was forced to drop to the floor and dash towards Kimiko in order to avoid the clinging, stinging mechanical mines.

Kimiko took this opportunity to kipup, backflipping back into a standing position and then strafing left as she let loose a spray of fire at their enemy. Sliding through the middle of the formation, Blasé took a few shots and, in return, attempted to bury his stinger in Kimiko's chestplate again. However, she jumped up at the last moment, and was on the receiving end of a body-check instead.

Even as Kimiko went flying, the hornet Maverick whirled to face X, just in time to catch a spattering of light plasma bursts along the frontside. With a hiss of pain, Blasé darted straight up to the ceiling, out of immediate reach. As Kimiko caught herself on the wall and began scrambling up it with a frantic series of rappelling kicks and clutches with her gauntlet spikes, the Maverick dropped a much wider spread of wasp bombs at X.

"Crap." X deadpanned, dashing furiously to escape the radius covered by the kamikaze robots, and nearly succeeding. One clamped itself to his back, then detonated simultaneously with the others, the shockwave throwing the blue prototype forwards, smack into a wall.

Chuckling evilly, Blasé readied his stinger and, just in case, 'painted' X with his targeting laser. Just as he was about to swoop in to impale the prototype, something large and heavy landed on his back. For an instant, the whine of a buster was audible over the Maverick's humming wings. The last thing Blasé heard was the p-kow sound of a plasma discharge, and then his head was melted.

Gripping the Maverick's body with her legs, Kimiko used her weight as leverage to perform a midair backflip, tossing the much lighter mass of metal away from her, and landing in a kneeling position. She paused then, to catch her breath, and inspect her left Buster cuff- the sharp wings of the Maverick had left an impressive line along it, where one had impacted. As she stood up, she heard a low whistle, and turned to where X was inspecting the reploid carcass.

"Well, that put a short end to that.... I'd have expected that would take much longer." He fingered the molten edge of the former Maverick's neck, examining the damage. "I think it's safe to say you're improving a lot. I'm impressed."

Kimiko had just enough time to blush before the scenery seemed to melt, colors and details shifting- and suddenly, the cubical room they had been in converted to a completely different one, the Maverick corpse gone entirely.

Instead, directly between the two armored fighters, stood a low, long figure, armed with two huge, heavy pincers, and a wide-bladed tail.

"How did you two get into my submarine?!? X???? Oh, this will be sweet. TIME TO DIE!!!"

And Crush Crawfish launched himself backwards towards the prototype, sharp tail-edge leading the way.

Turtlava muttered to himself as he tramped down the wide hallway as quickly as he could. "Rassa frassam..."

Another emergency WOULD happen just as his shift began. The orange-colored turtle-reploid felt his streak of bad luck was just getting worse. Bad enough he had drawn guard duty on the most boring part of the perimiter a few weeks ago, worse yet that that area would be the subject of an attack. To top that off, the intruder had easily gotten in past him, leaving him injured, with a fair-sized hole in his neck. As if that weren't enough, he had STILL had to complete the week's shifts for that location, and then, to top it off, he was now stuck with scrambling all about that area trying to make sure nothing happened AND look for a rogue.

He pulled a hard left, sliding into the wall and using that to alter his cource.

Still, he had to admit that that Kimiko character was actually a pretty nice young woman, when she wasn't wearing weird berserkoid robot armor. Her method of entry alone had been plenty to install her as a sort of celebrity about the base. That could have been bad if she'd turned out to be another crabby one, like Zero, or another recluse like X often was. But, she was friendly, if a bit shy, and managed to get along with the humans on base even better than most of the other reploids, which was really saying something.

Turtlava was pulled from his reverie by a 'crunch-hiss' from under his foot, then went sliding as the can of soda he'd stepped on squirted out from under his foot, leaving him to slide on his shell down the hallway, aided by a slick of cola.

'Typical.' He thought to himself. 'I wonder what'll happen now?'

As if in answer to that question, he hit a slightly down-sloped section of hallway, picking up a great deal of speed from his bulk, the soda, and the polished condition he always kept his shell in. Just as it was occuring to him that he was about to head out the service entrance and right into his patrol area, he struck something, and spun out, suddenly burdened with a passenger.

"WAAAGH!" Exclaimed the reploid he had caromed into, as they span and ricocheted down the hallway in a blur of green and orange. Moments later, there was a heavy CRASH, followed by a few shattering glass and crumpling plastic sounds, amidst the screech of twisting metal. Abruptly sitting up amidst a mess of garbage, with his slide-companion pinned into the corner by his weight, Turtlava sighed.

"Garbage, yeah, that's about right."

He stood, groaning slightly, and turned to regard the now-unconscious Reploid he'd unwittingly tossed into an old garbage can, and blinked twice. Suddenly, he felt like today was a very, very good day for him. He held up one of his arms, and spoke into the freshly installed comm there.

"This is Turtlava. I seem to have collected something... interesting. Requesting a lance of guards in corridor W-31, by the service bay."

This time it was Kimiko's turn to examine the remains of a Maverick, as X leaned on a wall, eyes moderately bloodshot from stress. Of course, the scene was slightly different.

As she gazed down at what would be better called a 'scrapheap' than a destroyed reploid, Kimiko reflected that, in large enough quantity, even the basic plasma 'pellets' normally fired by a buster could do a very good job of slagging things and people. She couldn't say for sure, but she got the impression that between the light spray of shot she'd laid out and the frenzied hail of plasma X had flung out while dashing backwards away from the Maverick, Crush hadn't even gotten the opportunity to come in contact with her mentor.

"I think," X began, trying to calm himself, "That staying on full alert from hereon out might be prudent."

Still somewhat wide-eyed, Kimiko nodded, fascinated by the spot where she could look in one side of the mangled heap and see the floor on the other side.

Stamp remained in place, blocking the hall, watching the hole that Zero had disappeared into. Several times, he could almost swear he smelt metal catching fire with the elite Hunter's rapid slashes, but there was no way to say.

For the seventh time, the last tech clambered out of the gaping hole in the wall, and the okay was given.

Immediately, a riot of buzzing, humming, and metallic impacts was heard. This time, there were several extra sounds, almost like... something hard, but flexible, hitting metal? The tone would suggest that Zero was now using his fist as well as his saber to break himself a path through the wall.

Tuning out the (barely) contained mayhem, Stamp craned his head over to look at one of the scrapheaps. Circuit boards, pipes, thick cables, thinner wires, at least one piece of conduit large enough for a smaller reploid to walk through standing upright, bundles of wire, many, many chunks of granite 'filler'...

It was amazing, he mused, just how much stuff was actually IN a wall, when one got down to it. Heck, half of what he saw, he couldn't even say what it was used for. Though THAT looked a little like a hard drive.

"'Scuse me." Turk grunted, stepping in the way of Stamp's line of sight. He began sifting through the pile of wreckage, sorting it into three piles- Filler, stuff, and other stuff. It was quite beyond stamp what the distinction between the latter two piles was, but then, he wasn't into the technical side of things.

Doctor James Cain, meanwhile, was still leaning on the wall, worrying. Boron had been around the base for quite a while. If he had been a Maverick plant, then there was plenty of potential for others. He had thought and hoped that the extensive Maverick Hunter screening process would prevent that. It also raised several questions.

If a reploid on base had been Maverick, why hadn't he infected, or tried to infect anyone else, or even the base's computer network? It didn't make a lot of sense for the Mavericks to go to the trouble of infiltrating a reploid that deeply in, only to leave a booby trap that would take out, at most, one unit of reploids.

Something wasn't adding up here.

Just as Cain arrived at that thought, there was a chime from the missive tube near him, and a datapad clunked down into the bin. Distractedly, he reached over and picked it up with his left hand, the other toying with his everpresent walking stick. Perhaps he ought to have one of the espionage/intelligence units look into this?

So distracted was he, that it took him several moments to register the words on the pad, but when he did, the reaction was instantaneous.

"Turk!" He exclaimed, causing the bulky reploid tech to whirl around. "You're in charge for the moment. There's something I have to go do."

With amazing speed for a man his age who was using a cane to be able to walk without an excessive limp, Cain hobbled down the hallway, squeaking past Stamp, and then rounding the corner, muttering excitedly to himself.

The only response Turk gave to the giant reploid's questioning gaze was a mystified shrug.

Hmmm... Another cliffhanger, I think. Will X and Kimiko ever finish the simulation? Will Zero make it in before they can/do? What, exactly, has James Cain so excited? Who did Turtlava run into? Why hasn't Arnie reappeared? Will Kimiko and X manage to keep from suffering fatal blood pressure rises? What's the secret ingredient in Pepsi? Why did only part one of Shining Force III come out in America? Are there any parts in Skies of Arcadia Legends that aren't in the original Dreamcast game? Will Lionhead Studios ever come out with a sequel to Black and White? Why do people join AOL when the Instant Messenger is free and lets you do more stuff? Why are there only three triggers on a Gamecube controller? What secrets are hidden in the Megaman Anniversary Collection for Gamecube? Will I ever stop asking questions? What happened to Shiny Entertainment after Earthworm Jim 2? What ever happened to the armadillo from the Saturn game Knuckles Chaotix? Why do I think you know? What aren't you telling me? Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?

Answers to some of these questions, and to other questions that haven't been asked, in the next episode of Light's Shade!

Oh, and a large wad of taffy will be in there too.


End file.
